The sight of the elected chief minister of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir protesting in New Delhi exposes the emptiness of India’s claims that the territory has been politically normalised. Hundreds joined Omar Abdullah and National Conference leaders on Monday to demand restoration of the statehood unilaterally withdrawn in August 2019. However, police restrictions on that protest supplied their own answer to New Delhi’s repeated assertions of democratic integration.
Seven years have passed since India revoked the territory’s limited constitutional autonomy, abrogated Articles 370 and 35A and divided the former state into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Elections were eventually held in 2024 for a 90-member assembly, with turnout reaching 63.88 per cent. Yet the elected government remains deprived of powers routinely exercised by state administrations elsewhere in India. Police, public order and crucial administrative authority continue to rest with the centre and its appointed lieutenant governor.
This is not meaningful self-government. It is an arrangement in which local representatives bear public responsibility while New Delhi retains decisive control. The contradiction is impossible to conceal. If India’s 2019 measures genuinely produced peace, confidence and democratic participation, there can be no defensible reason to withhold statehood. If extraordinary central control is still considered necessary, India’s narrative of successful normalisation collapses under its own weight.
The Indian Supreme Court recorded the government’s assurance in 2023 that Union Territory status was temporary and said statehood should be restored at the earliest. Elections have been held, but no binding timetable has followed. The phrase “appropriate time” has, therefore, become a mechanism for indefinite delay, allowing a constitutional right to be treated as a concession available at New Delhi’s discretion.
Restoration of statehood is therefore necessary, but it cannot be mistaken for a settlement of the Indian-held Kashmir dispute. It would not undo the illegal and unilateral measures of August 5, 2019, restore the constitutional protections removed that day or answer the Kashmiri people’s internationally recognised demand for self-determination.
Pakistan has consistently maintained this distinction. Islamabad rejects India’s attempt to alter the disputed territory’s status and demographic character and continues to support a peaceful settlement in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions and the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. It has repeatedly raised the issue at the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and in bilateral engagements with international partners.
That diplomatic advocacy remains essential because India has worked to recast an international dispute as an internal administrative matter. Pakistan must continue ensuring that detentions, restrictions on political activity, demographic changes and the denial of representative authority remain before the world’s conscience.
At the end of the day, elections under diminished authority cannot legitimise permanent occupation just as silence cannot convert an unresolved dispute into a settled one. *