Biggest Kashmir party opposed to India's stripping of region's autonomy wins most seats in election

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Kashmir’s biggest political party opposed to India's stripping of the region's semi-autonomy won the most seats in a local election, according to official data on Tuesday, following a vote seen as a referendum against the move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government five years ago.

National Conference, or NC, won 42 seats, mainly from the Kashmir Valley, the heartland of the anti-India rebellion, according to the data. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party secured 29 seats, all from the Hindu-dominated areas of Jammu.

India’s main opposition Congress party, which fought the election in alliance with the NC, succeeded in six constituencies.

“People have supported us more than our expectations. Now our efforts will be to prove that we are worth these votes,” Omar Abdullah, the NC leader and the region’s former chief minister who won from two seats, told reporters in the main city of Srinagar.

His father and president of the party, Farooq Abdullah, said that the mandate was to run the region without “police raj (rule)” and try freeing people from jails. “Media will be free,” he said.

Late Tuesday, Modi in an address to his party workers in New Delhi said the peaceful election in the region was “the victory of the Indian Constitution and democracy.”

“The people of Jammu and Kashmir gave the mandate to the NC alliance, I congratulate them too. If we look at the vote share percentage, BJP has emerged as the biggest party” in the region, he said.

The vote will allow Kashmir to have its own truncated government and a regional legislature, called an assembly, rather than being directly under New Delhi’s rule.

However, there will be a limited transition of power from New Delhi to the assembly as Kashmir will remain a “union territory” — directly controlled by the federal government — with India’s Parliament as its main legislator. Kashmir’s statehood must be restored for the new government to have powers similar to other states of India. But it will not have the special powers it enjoyed before the 2019 changes.

“People have given their mandate,” Farooq Abdullah said. “They have proven that they don’t accept the decision that was taken on August 5,” he added referring to India’s move in Aug. 2019.

Hundreds of the NC workers gathered outside counting centers and at the homes of the winning candidates to celebrate the party’s victory. Waving the party flags, they danced and burst firecrackers while chanting pro-Kashmir and pro-party slogans.

It was the first such vote in a decade and the first since Modi’s Hindu nationalist government scrapped the Muslim-majority region’s long-held semi-autonomy in 2019.

The unprecedented move downgraded and divided the former state into two centrally governed union territories, Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir. Both are ruled directly by New Delhi through its appointed administrators along with unelected bureaucrats and security setup. The move — which largely resonated in India and among Modi supporters — was mostly opposed in Kashmir as an assault on its identity and autonomy amid fears that it would pave the way for demographic changes in the region.

The region has since been on edge with civil liberties curbed and media gagged.

India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two of their three wars over the territory since they gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

Authorities tallied votes as thousands of additional police and paramilitary soldiers patrolled roads and guarded 28 counting centers. Nearly 8.9 million people were eligible to vote in the election, which began on Sept. 18 and concluded on Oct. 1. The overall turnout was 64% across the three phases, according to official data.

In the region’s legislature, five seats are appointed and 90 elected, so a party or coalition would need at least 48 of the 95 total seats to form a government. The alliance of the National Conference and the Congress have 48 seats combined.

Authorities have said the election will bring democracy to the region after decades of strife, but many locals viewed the vote as an opportunity not only to elect their own representatives but also to register their protest against the 2019 changes.

Except for the BJP, most parties who contested the election campaigned on promises to reverse the 2019 changes and address key issues like rising unemployment and inflation. The Congress party favored restoring the region’s statehood. The BJP has also stated that it will restore statehood, but has not told when it would do.

The BJP has vowed to block any move aimed at undoing most of the 2019 changes but promised to help in the region’s economic development.

Meanwhile, Modi’s BJP emerged victorious in the northern state of Haryana, bordering New Delhi, which it has ruled for 10 years, winning in 48 out of 90 constituencies, according to the Election Commission of India. The Congress party won 37 seats, the official data showed.

The voting trend in Haryana state is a surprise since most exit polls had predicted an easy victory for the Congress party. Indian exit polls have had a mixed record in the past in predicting election results.

The mandate is a simple majority that gives the BJP a record third five-year term in the state.

Modi in his address praised the people of Haryana for returning the BJP for a third time and said the state would witness faster development in the next five years.

“Haryana will develop, Jammu and Kashmir will develop, India will develop and we will do it,” he added.

Kashmir's last assembly election was held in 2014, after which the BJP for the first time ruled in a coalition with the local Peoples Democratic Party. But the government collapsed in 2018 after the BJP withdrew from the coalition.

Polls in the past have been marked with violence, boycotts and vote-rigging, even though India called them a victory over separatism.

Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

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Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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