Blood on the ballot: The voices of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir

On June 5, 2026, Pakistan announced the general elections for the Legislative Assembly of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) region to be held on July 27, 2026, showcasing its democratic credentials to the outside world. But along with the election announcement came the declaration of the most prominent civil society platform of PoK, called the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), as a proscribed terrorist organisation under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2014 by the PoK Home Department. The same evening of the announcement the security forces shot and killed a trader during a confrontation.

The JAAC has emerged over the years as a significant group advocating issues affecting common citizens of the region. Its demands have largely revolved around affordable electricity and rations, improved healthcare, better governance, relief from inflation and unemployment, and greater political representation. The organisation has also been vocally opposed to what it describes as the exploitation of the region’s resources and the continued political marginalisation of local voices. It had called for a region-wide demonstration (Chakka-Jam) on June 9 against what it described as a pattern of state violence and neglect. The ban on this organisation, which was issued before the elections and protest, was apparently timed to preempt their demonstration and local voices, resulting in the clashes that erupted between civilians and armed forces. In fact, even after a month, protests had not subsided; protesters remained on the streets, demanding political reforms and an end to the organised suppression of legitimate dissent, while officials accused them of attacking the military hospital in Rawalakot and therefore responded with fire, killing many. So far, the current unrest has resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred, hundreds of injuries, and the detention of over a thousand people. Following this incident, communications were blacked out and supplies were stopped across the region. Rawalakot became the epicentre of this unrest, with road blockades and continuous clashes, with a large number of security forces being deployed.

Interestingly, Islamabad has, for decades, positioned itself as the foremost advocate for the rights of the Kashmiri people, repeatedly raising the issue of human rights in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) at the United Nations and other international forums. However, that same state has used violence against unarmed civilians who were demanding cheaper electricity, healthcare, and better governance in the territory Pakistan administers. In fact, last year, at least nine people were killed and hundreds were injured in a similar kind of protest across PoK, which was against exorbitant electricity tariffs and high flour prices. The pattern is unmistakable, and the silence of international human rights bodies in response to it is equally telling.

The JAAC’s grievances are not merely about civic amenities, though those are legitimate enough on their own. The organisation has long objected to the composition of PoK’s so-called legislative assembly, whose 53-member structure reserves 12 seats for refugees who fled J&K in 1947 and 1965 and are now scattered across Pakistan. Of these, six seats represent refugees from the Jammu region, whose population is approximately 434,000, and six from the Kashmir Valley, whose numbers are around 30,000. The JAAC says this setup is clearly unfair and notes that the party in power in Islamabad usually wins most of these refugee seats, using them as a lever to install compliant governments in Muzaffarabad. The ban on the JAAC ahead of elections that carry this structural distortion built in is, in this light, less a security measure and more a political operation.

India has formally protested Pakistan’s decision to conduct elections in PoK, reiterating its long-standing position that the territory is illegally and forcibly occupied by Pakistan and that any electoral exercise conducted there is constitutionally and legally void. India’s stand is legally correct but insufficient given the scale of what is now unfolding on the ground. In both the Indian constitutional framework and the moral logic of the Kashmir dispute, the people of PoK are India’s own people, residents of a region that is legally part of India. When armed forces of an occupying state shoot those people for demanding basic needs like flour and electricity at an affordable price, India’s response cannot remain confined to measured diplomatic protests alone.
New Delhi should escalate this issue forcefully, both directly with Islamabad, given Pakistan’s minimal record of good-faith engagement, and at the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN General Assembly, and through its interactions with partner democratic countries. India should insist on granting independent access to PoK to international human rights organisations to document the killings, detentions, and communications blackouts. Simultaneously, India should revisit the issue of the 24 reserved seats in the J&K legislative assembly that exist for representatives from PoK but have never been filled. Conducting an electoral process for those seats would be a powerful symbolic and diplomatic assertion of India’s sovereign claim and a meaningful gesture of solidarity with the people across the Line of Control (LoC) whose voices Islamabad has now been formally banned. The violence in PoK is not an anomaly; it is the inevitable expression of a political arrangement built on suppression. As Pakistan prepares to stage an election on July 27, its most prominent civil society organisations are outlawed and its streets awash with civilian blood. The question for India and the international community is whether they will continue to engage with the fiction or whether they will finally hold the occupying power to the same standards they so loudly demand of others.

Shuvam Sharma is a research scholar at the Department of National Security Studies, Central University of Jammu, and Dr. M. Venkataraman is a professor at the Department of National Security Studies, Central University of Jammu