Government accused of undermining opposition campaigns in India's Kashmir.

• Kashmir valley opposition leaders have accused the Modi government of hindering their campaign activities.
• For the first time since 1996, the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Modi, is not participating in elections in Kashmir.
• The government's decision to revoke Kashmir's autonomy in 2019 and divide it into federally-controlled territories sparked controversy.

In India's Kashmir valley, opposition leaders have accused the Modi administration of canceling or denying permission for campaign events to aid the party's "proxies."

The leader of the largest regional political party, the National Conference, Omar Abdullah, stated that Modi's government was attempting to undermine his campaign prior to the voting for the first seat in Kashmir on Monday.

Since 1996, the BJP-led government is avoiding elections in Kashmir, despite its claims of integrating the region with the rest of India and restoring peace and normalcy to the valley, which has been plagued by a 35-year-old insurgency against Indian rule.

In 2019, Modi abolished Jammu and Kashmir's semi-autonomy, stripped it of statehood, and split it into two centrally-administered territories: Muslim-majority Kashmir and Hindu-dominated Jammu, along with a mountainous Buddhist region of Ladakh.

The BJP has not put forth any candidate in Kashmir's three seats but has stated that as part of its overall strategy, it will back smaller regional parties, without specifying which ones.

On Thursday, in a letter to the Election Commission of India, Abdullah stated that the police, which are under the control of the federal government, cancelled the permissions for his rallies without providing any reasons.

He claimed on social media platform X that it was done to assist the BJP's "proxy candidates".

The PDP leader, Mehbooba Mufti, accused the police of preventing her from holding campaign events, just like her rival did.

The police's attitude of restricting our movement to support BJP-backed parties goes against the Election Commission of India's guidelines, she stated at a rally in Srinagar on Thursday.

A police official in charge of Kashmir, V.K. Birdi, did not promptly respond to a request for comment.

Both Abdullah and Mufti have stated their opposition to the BJP and their support for a Congress-led alliance comprising more than two dozen parties at the federal level.

The election watchdog's state unit has requested Waheed ur Rehman Para, the PDP candidate in Srinagar, to avoid referring to the election as a "referendum" against the revocation of the region's semi-autonomy in 2019 in his speeches.

The elections in Srinagar will take place on May 13, while the other two seats will have their elections on May 20 and 25.

India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed neighbors, control portions of Kashmir but claim the entire region and have fought two of their three wars over it.