India’s Supreme Court has upheld the government’s decision to revoke special status for the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Ruling on Monday, the court also ordered the region to hold local elections by September 30 next year. The decision is viewed by critics as another step by the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) to clamp down on India’s only Muslim-majority region.
After seven decades or so of significant autonomy for the contested Jammu and Kashmir region under the Indian constitution’s Article 370, granted in 1947 after the first India-Pakistan war over the Himalayan region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the article in 2019.
The region has been at the heart of more than 75 years of animosity between India and Pakistan since the two countries became independent from British rule in 1947.
Two years later, the Indian constitution’s Article 370 came into effect, becoming the basis for Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to the Indian union. This gave the region autonomy in making its own laws in all matters except finance, defence, foreign affairs and communications.
Although PM Modi called the ruling “a beacon of hope, a promise of a brighter future”, political parties in Kashmir that opposed the revocation, and were among those that went to court, expressed disappointment.
The Kashmir region is divided between India, which rules the populous Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-dominated region of Jammu; Pakistan controls a wedge of territory in the west and China holds a thinly populated high-altitude area in the north.
