NEW DELHI – India will formally split up disputed Jammu and Kashmir stateinto two federal territories on Thursday, aiming to tighten its grip on therestive region that has been in the grip of a harsh security clampdown fornearly three months.
Street protests against the measures have erupted sporadically, whilemilitants have killed about a dozen people from outside the state in recentweeks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government withdrewKashmir’s autonomy in August but in addition it also announced the divisionof the state into two territories to be directly ruled from New Delhi – oneconsisting of Jammu and Kashmir and the other the remote Buddhist enclaveof Ladakh. At the same time it poured thousands of more troops into theMuslim-majority Kashmir valley where separatists have been fighting against Indian rule for decades, and made sweeping arrests to prevent any outbreakof violence.
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The government also imposed severe restrictions on travel and cut telephoneand internet lines. Some measures have been scaled back but a securitylockdown is still largely in place and broadband and mobile internetconnections remain unavailable to most Kashmiris.
