SRINAGAR: Leaders of Kashmir’s biggest political party were sworn into office Wednesday to run a largely powerless government after the first local election since the Centre stripped the region of its special status five years ago.National Conference leader Omar Abdullah will be the region’s chief minister after his party won the most seats in the three-phased election. It has support from India’s main opposition Congress party, although Congress decided not to be a part of the new government for now.The vote was Kashmir’s first in a decade and the first since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped the Muslim-majority region’s long-held semi-autonomy in 2019. The National Conference staunchly opposed the move, and its victory is seen as a referendum against the Modi government’s changes.Lt. Gov. Manoj Sinha administered the oaths of office to Abdullah and the five members of his council of ministers in a ceremony under tight security at a lakeside venue in Srinagar. Some of India’s top opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, attended.However, there will be a limited transfer of power from New Delhi to the local government as Kashmir will remain a “union territory” — directly controlled by the Centre — with the Lok Sabha as its main legislator. Kashmir’s statehood would have to be restored for the new government to have powers similar to other states of India.Kashmir’s last assembly election in 2014 brought to power Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which for the first time ruled in a coalition with the local Peoples Democratic Party. The government collapsed in 2018, after the BJP withdrew from the coalition and New Delhi took the region under its direct control.A year later, the Centre downgraded and divided the former state into two centrally governed union territories, Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir. The move — which largely resonated in India and among Modi supporters — was mostly opposed in Kashmir as an assault on its identity and autonomy amid fears that it would pave the way for demographic changes in the region.
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