India runs Kashmir council vote despite lockdown, boycott

Village council elections are being conducted Thursday in  Kashmir, but the absence of mainstream local politicians leaves worry the polls will install puppets of the central government that revoked the region's semi-autonomous status in early August.
Officials are hoping the elections of leaders for more than 300 councils will lend credibility amid a political vacuum and contend they will represent local interests better than former state-level government officials.
But the elections are being boycotted by most political parties, including those whose leaders had been sympathetic to the central government but are now in makeshift jails or under house arrest. India's main opposition Congress party is boycotting as well, possibly allowing a clean sweep for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP has a very small base in the Kashmir valley.
In the elections, members of the more than 300 Block Development Councils formed last year will choose chairs. Each block comprises a cluster of villages across Jammu and Kashmir, a state that India's Parliament downgraded in August to a federal territory, a change that takes effect on October 31.

About 1,000 people are running. In at least 25 councils, candidates are running unopposed.

Most of the candidates and thousands of council members, the electorate for Thursday's vote, have lived for months in hotels in Srinagar, the region's main city, over security concerns.

Officials tout the councils, which will be responsible for allocating government funds, as grassroots democracy. But observers say the system lacks legitimacy in Kashmir.

Political scientist Dr. Noor Ahmed Baba said the exercise, at least in theory, is an "important layer of democracy" but questioned conducting it in "extremely difficult and abnormal times."

"When most people are bothered about their basic freedoms and livelihood, facing crushing restrictions, you've these elections," Baba said. "This is more like completing a formality. It looks more like an artificial exercise."

The council elections held last December were boycotted by separatist leaders and armed rebel groups who challenge India's sovereignty over Kashmir. Both rebels and separatists in the past have called elections in Kashmir an illegitimate exercise under military occupation.

About 60 per cent of the 21,208 village council seats in the Kashmir valley are vacant because no one ran for them. The winners of another 30% were elected unopposed.

Police chief Dilbagh Singh said authorities have made security arrangements for the Thursday's elections to be conducted smoothly.

Before downgrading Kashmir's status, New Delhi sent tens of thousands of additional troops to the regions, imposed a sweeping curfew, and cut virtually all communications.

Authorities have since eased some restrictions, lifting roadblocks and restoring landlines and some mobile phones.
The Modi government says removing a constitutional provision that had given Kashmir some measure of autonomy since independence from British rule in 1947 was necessary to give rights afforded other Indian citizens, to usher in greater economic development and do away with the sense of separateness that BJP leaders say has cultivated the separatist movement.

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