Voters in Pakistan-administered Kashmir began casting ballots Monday in the final phase of elections for the region's legislative assembly. The voting in the Poonch district's four constituencies is proceeding despite a boycott call from the outlawed Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), according to regional election officials.
Security measures have been intensified around polling stations as residents choose their representatives in the disputed Himalayan region, which is divided between Pakistan and India. Both nations lay claim to the entirety of Kashmir, and it has been the cause of two of their three wars since their independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Pakistan's ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party has already secured a majority in the assembly, winning 24 out of 34 seats in the preceding two phases. This positions the party to form the regional government, a return to power after a decade.
Several prominent politicians are contesting the remaining seats, including Regional Prime Minister Faisal Rathore and former Prime Ministers Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan and Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan. Mushtaq Minhas, a senior vice president of the PML-N, is also among the candidates.
Rana Sanaullah, a political affairs adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, expressed confidence that the PML-N would achieve a two-thirds majority and form the next government in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The election process, conducted in phases due to security concerns, is expected to conclude this month, after which newly elected lawmakers will be sworn in and will select the region's next prime minister.
The election campaign was significantly impacted by weeks of protests led by the JAAC, which advocated for residents to refrain from participating in the vote. The regional government recently banned the JAAC, citing security and public order issues.
The core of the dispute between the JAAC and the regional government involves 12 legislative seats designated for individuals displaced from Indian-controlled Kashmir since the end of British colonial rule. The JAAC contends that this arrangement grants disproportionate political influence to those residing outside Pakistan-administered Kashmir and has called for the abolition of these seats. These reserved seats were established to ensure political representation for people displaced from Indian-controlled Kashmir who settled elsewhere in Pakistan, as Pakistan-administered Kashmir reportedly lacked the capacity to accommodate them.
The JAAC, formed in 2023, has been advocating for increased political rights for the people of Kashmir. The government states that it has agreed to 36 of the group's 38 demands and maintains that the issue of the reserved seats can only be resolved by the regional assembly.