India removed a provision offering voting rights to new residents of its Jammu and Kashmir area on Thursday as a result of intense opposition from political parties, who saw it as an attempt to alter the demography of the nation’s sole territory with a Muslim majority.
India and Pakistan, who possess nuclear weapons and have fought two of their three wars for sovereignty of the Himalayan region, both fully claim and partially govern Kashmir.
India reduced the autonomy that remained in its portion of the territory in 2019 by splitting Jammu and Kashmir state into two federally-controlled regions and amending the constitution to allow non-Kashmiris to vote and own property there.
The regulation that was repealed on Thursday had just been implemented two days earlier in one of the region’s 20 districts.
It had replaced a law that restricted the right to vote to only individuals who had resided there in 1947, the year that India attained independence, or their ancestors, and permitted Indians who had lived in Kashmir for a year or longer to register as voters.
Avny Lavasa, an election official in the Jammu area, told Reuters that the measure from October 11 “is withdrawn and to be deemed as void” without providing a justification.
The last time Kashmir participated in national elections was in 2019, only a few months before it lost its autonomy.
