Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir will hold local elections for the first time in a decade, the head of the electoral commission said Friday, after polls were stalled in the disputed region following New Delhi’s imposition of direct rule in 2019.

“After a long gap, elections are due and will be held in Jammu and Kashmir,” chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar told reporters in New Delhi.

Voting for the region’s assembly will be staggered over three stages between September 18 and October 1.

A total of 8.7 million people will be eligible to vote, the commission said.

Ballots from around the region will be counted all at once on October 4 and are usually announced on the same day.

The Muslim-majority region has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and each side claims it in full.

Some see the polls as a critical step in returning the vote to the people to choose their leaders.

But critics say the 90-seat assembly will only have nominal powers over education and culture, and critical decisions will still rest in New Delhi’s hands.

About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, battling a 35-year-long insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels since 1989.

Elections for five seats in India’s national parliament were held in June.

The vote saw a 58.6 per cent turnout, according to the election commission, a 30-percentage-point jump from the last vote in 2019 and the highest in 35 years.

The last assembly election was in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) entered into a ruling coalition with the Peoples Democratic Party.

Also, read this

Pakistan should consider making Azad Kashmir a province like India: Miftah

Four dead, 19 missing after boat capsizes in occupied Kashmir

Pakistan rejects Indian apex court’s verdict on IIOJK

The assembly was dissolved in 2018 after the BJP pulled out and the coalition collapsed.

In 2019, Modi’s government cancelled the partial autonomy of the region, turning it into a federally-administered “union territory”.

That change stalled planned polls, and since then there have been no local-level lawmakers.

Instead, it has been run by a New Delhi-appointed governor.