Can Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s election overcome a violent summer?

Published 22 July 2026 · politics

After months of protests and a crackdown, Pakistan-administered Kashmir heads into elections clouded by uncertainty. Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administered Kashmir: The traffic crawled beneath densely strung election bunting. Overhead hung the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PMLN) green tigers. Further down, Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) red and black flags bearing the party’s arrow encircled the clock tower at Lal Chowk, a square near Muzaffarabad’s main market, built to honour the original Lal Chowk across the Line of Control in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Srinagar. Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, does not look like a city in the grip of a crisis. It looks like a city preparing for an election. Both are true. Since early June, the territory has witnessed weeks of protests and sit-ins that have killed dozens. The protests are tied to elections for the region’s provincial legislature that were scheduled for July 27, but that on Monday were divided into voting now to be held on three separate days. Voting in the region’s Mirpur division will continue as planned on July 27. Elections in Poonch division, which has been the hotbed of protests, will now be held on August 10. Voting in Muzaffarabad and for 12 other seats reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who now live elsewhere in Pakistan will be held on August 2, the region’s Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retired) Ghulam Mustafa Mughal told Al Jazeera, citing security concerns arising from the unrest as the reason for the changed schedule. It is those reserved seats for refugees that are at the heart of the agitation, with protesters demanding that they be scrapped, arguing that only those living in Pakistan-administered Kashmir should now be eligible to contest in elections to the regional legislature. And it is in the backdrop of those tensions that the region is now readying to vote. “I have never joined them, I never participated in their protest,” a 60-year-old driver, bespectacled and bearded, said of the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC), commonly known as JAAC, the movement whose protests have dominated the politics of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, particularly Poonch division, in recent months. “But my only reason to support them is that all the people in this movement are poor people, my sympathies are with them. They are the ones fighting and demanding for my rights,” the driver, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera, as he finished his lunch at a roadside hotel in Muzaffarabad on July 20. When it came to the election, however, he was unequivocal: he would not vote. “We should be part of the democratic process, but the person you want to vote for isn’t allowed on the ballot,” he said, referring to the JAAC, which was banned in June. “A vote is a responsibility, and it should only be given to those who deserve it. Right now the candidates on offer are all corrupt, and I will not be giving my vote.” An election amid unrest The Kashmir region, a scenic but disputed Himalayan territory, has been at the centre of multiple wars between Pakistan and India since both gained independence from British rule in 1947. While both countries claim the region in full, they administer separate parts of it. Home to more than four million people, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, locally known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), has a semi-autonomous government with its own president, prime minister and Supreme Court. The election was always going to be shaped by the latest crisis, JAAC’s fifth major mobilisation since the movement was founded in September 2023. But Mughal, AJK’s chief election commissioner, said Poonch was the only division where, he said, “we have a bit of security-related concern”. He is not the only official insisting the electoral process remains on track.