REGIONAL polls to elect a local government will not resolve Kashmir’s decades-old conflict, a key resistance leader has said.

Ahead of the final phase of elections in the Indian-controlled region, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq — who has spent most of the last five years under house detention — said polls are being held as political voices, contesting India’s sovereignty over the region, remain silenced.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right Hindu nationalist government stripped Kashmir of its semi-autonomous constitutional status in 2019.