INDIA-controlled Kashmir’s regional legislature passed a resolution today demanding the federal government restore the disputed region’s semi-autonomy that was scrapped by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right administration in 2019.

The assembly passed the non-binding resolution by a majority vote to noisy scenes in the house.

“This assembly calls upon the government of India to initiate dialogue with elected representatives of people of Jammu and Kashmir for restoration of special status,” the resolution read.

Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which has 29 members in the 90-seat assembly, rejected the resolution. It requires the approval of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, New Delhi’s appointed top administrator in Kashmir.

The National Conference party, which sponsored the resolution, came to power last month in the region’s first vote in a decade and the first since Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist government scrapped its semi-autonomy. 

The federal government also downgraded and divided the former state into two centrally governed union territories, Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir.

The region continues to remain a “union territory” — directly controlled by the federal government with India’s Parliament as its main legislator.

India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the whole territory as their own. The rivals have fought two of their three wars over the territory since they gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.