India’s Modi campaigns in Kashmir polls after latest soldier deaths

Indian Prime Narendra Modi said “terrorism is on its last legs” in Kashmir while campaigning in the disputed territory on Saturday, a day after two soldiers were killed in a gunfight with suspected militants.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a rise in clashes between rebels and security forces ahead of the region’s first local assembly polls in a decade, which begin next week.

The Himalayan region in India has been without an elected local government since 2019, when Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government cancelled the region’s semi-autonomy.

“The changes in the region in the last decade are nothing short of a dream,” Modi told thousands of supporters at the rally in Doda, part of Kashmir’s Hindu-majority southern region of Jammu.

“The stones that were picked up earlier to attack the police and the army are now being used to construct a new Jammu and Kashmir. This is a new era of progress, terrorism is on its last leg here,” he said.

Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim that the government’s changes to the territory’s governance have brought a new era of peace to Kashmir and rapid economic growth.

The implementation of those changes in 2019 was accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long internet and communications blackout to forestall protests.

Many Kashmiris are resentful of chafing restrictions on civil liberties that followed, and the BJP is only fielding candidates in a minority of seats concentrated in Hindu-majority areas.

– ‘Sacrifice of the bravehearts’ –

Modi pledged at Saturday’s rally that his party would “build a secure and prosperous” Kashmir “that is free of terrorism and a haven for tourists”.

But this year’s local polls, which begin on Wednesday before results are announced next month, follow a spike in gunfights between security forces and rebels.

In the past two years, more than 50 soldiers were killed in clashes with rebels, mostly in the Jammu region.

The Indian army on Friday said that another two soldiers had died Friday during a firefight in the Kishtwar region, paying tribute to the “supreme sacrifice of the bravehearts” in a post on social media platform X.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947 and is claimed in full by both countries.

Rebels have fought Indian forces for decades, demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan.

About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, battling a 35-year insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels since 1989.

India accuses Pakistan of backing the region’s militants and cross-border attacks inside its territory, claims Islamabad denies.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought several conflicts for control of the region since 1947. (BSS/AFP)