With fresh faces emerging to challenge the traditional political powerhouses, the region’s political dynamics already appear to be changing.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting the main city in Himalayan Kashmir to campaign for his party in the staggered local election in a first such vote since New Delhi stripped the disputed region’s semi-autonomy in 2019.

Eight constituencies in the Jammu region and 16 from the Kashmir Valley voted on the first phase of assembly elections. Two more rounds of voting remain.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, many people boycotted elections for decades in protest against Indian rule. The vote is the first in a decade, and the first since Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in 2019 scrapped the Muslim-majority region’s special status and downgraded the former state to a federally governed territory.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, residents are voting in elections that some hope will lead to restoration of the territory's statehood, which ended when it became a federally governed territory in 2019.