Pakistan’s Kashmir votes: Why the election hinges on 12 disputed seats

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan-administered Kashmir, formally known arsenic Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), has spent the summertime nether an unofficial authorities of emergency.

Since aboriginal June, astir 40 radical person been killed successful clashes betwixt protesters and information forces, with sit-ins and roadworthy blockades regular features successful the portion implicit this period.

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Banks remained unopen for 2 weeks. Mobile and net services stay suspended crossed astir of the territory. Poonch division, which borders India and has been the epicentre of the unrest, was efficaciously sealed disconnected for weeks, disrupting the proviso of flour and different essentials to a portion that depends heavy connected them.

The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the question down the protests, was banned by the section authorities connected June 5, days earlier a planned demonstration.

Its enactment has since been arrested, has gone underground or has continued organising from sit-in camps successful Rawalakot, the administrative office of Poonch division.

Its demands, erstwhile centred connected subsidised flour and cheaper electricity, person expanded to 38 points, main among them the abolition of 12 assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees.

All of this is unfolding arsenic the portion prepares to vote. Elections for the 45-seat Legislative Assembly, primitively scheduled for July 27, person been divided crossed 3 dates.

Mirpur part votes arsenic planned, Muzaffarabad part and the 12 seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees travel connected August 2, portion Poonch division, wherever tensions stay highest, goes to the polls connected August 10.

JAAC’s enactment is not connected the ballot and has urged supporters to boycott the vote.

Of each the movement’s demands, 1 contented has proved intolerable to resolve: the 12 exile seats. The authorities says they cannot beryllium touched without a law amendment. JAAC wants them abolished outright.

Between those 2 positions lies a ineligible statement stretching backmost astir a century, and a much cardinal question: who gets to determine who governs Muzaffarabad?

A twelve seats, 1 dispute

Of the AJK Legislative Assembly’s 45 elected seats, 33 are filled from constituencies wrong the territory.

The remaining 12 are reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who present unrecorded successful antithetic parts of Pakistan.

People chant slogans arsenic they locomotion during a protestation and shutter-down onslaught called by the banned Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), an confederation of civilian nine groups, successful Neelum Valley, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, June 21, 2026 [Naseer ud Din/Reuters]

The statement traces its roots to electoral arrangements introduced successful 1960, reinforced done laws successful 1964 and 1970, earlier being formalised successful AJK’s 1974 Interim Constitution and reaffirmed by the constitution’s 13th Amendment successful 2018.

Chaudhry Muhammad Ibrahim Zia, a erstwhile main justness of the AJK Supreme Court, said the ground for the seats goes backmost further still, to the AJK government’s founding declaration of October 24, 1947, which helium said reflected “the corporate volition of the radical of the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.

Refugee representation, helium told Al Jazeera, has “a steadfast humanities basis” rooted successful that document. He rejects immoderate proposition that the seats are unconstitutional.

“They person some humanities grounding and law support,” helium said. “These seats cannot beryllium described arsenic unconstitutional.”

Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s electorate has grown from 3.2 cardinal voters successful 2021 to much than 3.8 cardinal this year, according to Election Commission figures.

Within that, the 12 exile constituencies relationship for astir 439,000 registered voters, scattered crossed cities including Lahore, Rawalpindi and Sialkot, alternatively than concentrated successful a azygous geographical country similar AJK’s territorial constituencies.

And that’s a problem, says Kashif Abbasi, a JAAC committee member.

“This predetermination is meant for radical who really unrecorded successful AJK,” helium told Al Jazeera. “These 12 seats beryllium extracurricular AJK’s jurisdiction. This doesn’t hap anyplace else.”

From flour to the assembly floor

JAAC’s demands were not ever centred connected the exile seats. Its original charter was astir wholly economic, focusing connected subsidised flour, energy astatine outgo price, and a stock successful the benefits from the Mangla and Neelum-Jhelum hydropower projects.

The exile seats archetypal appeared successful the group’s expanded charter, submitted successful October 2025.

Even then, JAAC did not initially question their outright abolition. In written proposals submitted connected May 30 this year, the radical offered 2 alternatives.

It projected retaining symbolic exile practice until the Kashmir quality is permanently resolved oregon replacing the 12 assembly seats with 4 seats successful the AJK Council, the Islamabad-chaired assemblage that exercises legislative authorization implicit AJK’s federal-facing affairs.

The 14-member council, chaired by Pakistan’s premier minister, oversees subjects including electricity, banking and parts of taxation, areas that mostly autumn extracurricular the AJK assembly’s authority. The territory has nary practice successful Pakistan’s nationalist parliament.

“Our proposition was that these seat-holders should alternatively beryllium fixed practice connected the Kashmir Council, and that their assembly seats beryllium eliminated, with that wealth utilized elsewhere successful the territory,” Khawaja Mehran, a subordinate of JAAC’s halfway committee, told Al Jazeera recently.

Both proposals were rejected astatine an All-Parties Conference successful Muzaffarabad connected June 3.

Constitutional barrier

In June, the AJK Supreme Court addressed the contented directly.

The tribunal held that the seats are protected nether AJK’s constitution and tin lone beryllium abolished done a ceremonial law amendment. They cannot beryllium removed done enforcement enactment oregon nationalist pressure.

A law amendment, the judges wrote, is “a solemn law act, not a concession to beryllium wrested from a authorities nether duress”.

Zia, the erstwhile AJK main justice, said the sentiment changed small astir the existing ineligible position.

“These seats simply cannot beryllium abolished without a due law process,” helium told Al Jazeera, adding that, with the outgoing assembly’s word having ended, nary specified process is imaginable until a caller legislature is elected.

The government’s account

Abdul Majid Khan, AJK’s erstwhile concern curate and himself from a exile family, rejects the thought that the spot holders signifier an unaccountable governmental bloc.

A presumption of Muzaffarabad, the superior of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, connected July 15, 2026. The unrest successful the metropolis follows the caller banning of the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), with authorities maintaining heightened information and restrictions connected net and telephone services crossed the portion [Amiruddin Mughal/EPA]

He points alternatively to the size of the territory’s budget. AJK’s astir 310 cardinal rupees (about $1.1bn) fund past year, helium said, acold exceeds the improvement funds allocated to the 12 exile constituencies – obscurity adjacent enough, successful his view, to marque them the almighty bloc JAAC describes.

“These are radical who migrated for a larger cause,” Khan told Al Jazeera, referring to Kashmiris who fled Jammu, crossed the border, during the unit of 1947 pursuing the partition of the subcontinent and settled crossed Pakistan successful the decades that followed.

Refugee representation, helium said, has existed since AJK’s archetypal parliamentary predetermination successful 1975, erstwhile the territory’s archetypal premier curate was himself from a exile family.

At the June 3 league that rejected JAAC’s proposals, AJK Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore said immoderate determination connected the seats “can lone beryllium taken by the elected representatives successful the House”, adding that astir of JAAC’s different demands had already been met.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the National Assembly connected June 11 that the aboriginal of the 12 exile seats should beryllium decided by voters, not nether unit from thoroughfare protests.

He urged JAAC to contention the contented successful the predetermination alternatively than request its solution beforehand, asking: “How could you exclude them from the electoral process?”

A elder authorities authoritative successful Poonch, whose part has witnessed the worst of the unrest, took an adjacent harder line.

“This is nary longer a rights movement,” the authoritative told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity since helium was not allowed to talk to the media, adding that the protesters were not lone “challenging the authorization of the state”, but besides provoking the nationalist done “inflammatory speeches and actions”.

Who holds power?

In mid-July, JAAC person Umar Nazir Kashmiri told supporters astatine a sit-in successful Rawalakot, Poonch division, that the radical had written straight to service main Field Marshal Asim Munir aft concluding that its concerns were not reaching him “through authoritative channels”.

He thanked Munir by sanction for “understanding the grievances of the radical of Kashmir”.

Shaheen was much direct. “We judge existent authorization presently sits with Rawalpindi,” helium told Al Jazeera, referring to Pakistan’s subject constitution alternatively than the civilian government. “That’s wherefore we’re forced to negociate done that channel, since cipher other really holds the authority.”

Ershad Mahmud, a Canada-based researcher connected Kashmiri displacement and politics, said that “Islamabad’s bureaucracy, subject and quality constitution person reduced AJK’s elected enactment to a mostly symbolic role”.

The existent crisis, helium told Al Jazeera, has erstwhile again shown that the section enactment “lacks the authorization to negociate a governmental colony with its ain people”.

People attack a conveyance astatine a makeshift checkpoint during a protestation and shutter-down onslaught called by the banned Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), an confederation of civilian nine groups, successful Neelum Valley, Pakistani Kashmir, connected June 21, 2026 [Naseer ud Din/Reuters]

Unmet promise?

The quality implicit the exile seats is unfolding wrong a model that predates Pakistan-administered Kashmir itself.

Under a United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan solution adopted connected January 5, 1949, and endorsed by the UN Security Council, Kashmir’s last presumption was to beryllium determined “through the antiauthoritarian method of a escaped and impartial plebiscite”.

Nearly 80 years later, that has yet to hap connected either broadside of the Line of Control.

Mahmud, who is besides the writer of Poonch: Identity, Politics and Resistance, argues the exile seats endure partially due to the fact that they proceed to service Islamabad’s interests.

“They fto Pakistan support its presumption that AJK represents the full erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, not simply the territory it administers,” helium told Al Jazeera. “And allows Pakistan-based governmental parties to power authorities enactment successful Muzaffarabad.”

Islamabad, helium said, treats the seats “as an instrumentality of its Kashmir argumentation and governmental influence”.

Hassan Kamal Wattoo, a Lahore-based law lawyer, argues that giving greater autonomy to AJK “strengthens Pakistan’s lawsuit connected the planetary stage”.

“There is nary hostility betwixt existent autonomy for AJK and an eventual plebiscite,” helium told Al Jazeera.

Anam Zakaria, a historiographer and writer of Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, however, argued that determination was a deeper contradiction wrong AJK’s law framework.

On the 1 manus lies India’s “longstanding and ongoing systemic unit and quality rights abuses successful [Indian-administered] Kashmir”, she said, arguing that thing Pakistan has done oregon does successful the portion of Kashmir it administers tin beryllium compared with what’s happened successful Indian-administered Kashmir, wherever tens of thousands of radical person been killed successful unit involving equipped rebels and information forces since 1989.

At the aforesaid time, she pointed out, candidates seeking nationalist bureau successful Pakistan-administered Kashmir indispensable archetypal curse allegiance to AJK’s accession to Pakistan.

That requirement, she told Al Jazeera, besides “in itself contradicts the close to self-determination” and sidelines Kashmiris who clasp a antithetic imaginativeness for the region’s future.