India announces Kashmir polls after 10-year hiatus

Assembly elections are normally held after five years, but political uncertainty had delayed the polls.

“After a long gap, elections are due and will be held in Jammu and Kashmir,” Mr Kumar told a news conference in Delhi on Friday.

He added that Kashmir had voted “for ballot over bullet” – as the region had witnessed a historic voter turnout of 58.46% in the recently-held parliamentary elections, a 30-point jump in voter turnout from the 2019 general election.

The commission later posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the long queues of voters during the general elections were “a testament to the will and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in writing their own destiny”.

Friday’s announcement comes just months after India’s Supreme Court upheld the government decision to scrap the constitution’s Article 370, which gave the region significant autonomy. The court also ordered that assembly elections be held by 30 September.

While taking away Kashmir’s special status, the government had also split the state of more than 12 million people into two federally administered territories – of Ladakh; and Jammu and Kashmir.

The revocation was one of the poll promises by Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019 and the decision had made the party very unpopular in the state.

In March, the prime minister visited the region for the first time since 2019 and said he was “working hard to win your hearts”. He also announced projects worth 64bn rupees ($774m; £607m) to support local agriculture and tourism.

But analysts and local politicians say the anger against the BJP remains.