Security was tight on Wednesday as a phased election for choosing a local government in Indian-controlled Kashmir opened in the first such vote since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped the disputed region of its special status five years ago.

With fresh faces emerging to challenge the traditional political powerhouses, the region’s political dynamics already appear to be changing.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, many people boycotted elections for decades in protest against Indian rule. The vote is the first in a decade, and the first since Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in 2019 scrapped the Muslim-majority region’s special status and downgraded the former state to a federally governed territory.

Voters queued outside polling stations in India's Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday to vote in the first provincial election being held in a decade in the Himalayan region that has grappled with years of militant violence.

The vote will see a limited transition of power from New Delhi to the local assembly, with a chief minister at the top heading a council of ministers. But Kashmir will continue to be a “Union Territory” — a region directly controlled by the federal government — with India’s Parliament remaining its main legislator.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, residents are voting in elections that some hope will lead to restoration of the territory's statehood, which ended when it became a federally governed territory in 2019.