India's Modi campaigns in Kashmir elections following recent soldier deaths

While campaigning in Kashmir on Saturday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that "terrorism is on its last legs" in the region, just a day after two soldiers were killed in a clash with suspected militants, News.Az reports citing foreign media.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a rise in clashes between rebels and security forces ahead of the region's first local assembly polls in a decade, which begin next week.

The Himalayan region in India has been without an elected local government since 2019, when Modi's government cancelled the region's semi-autonomy.

"The changes in the region in the last decade are nothing short of a dream," Modi told thousands of supporters at the rally in Doda, part of Kashmir's Hindu-majority southern region of Jammu.

"The stones that were picked up earlier to attack the police and the army are now being used to construct a new Jammu and Kashmir. This is a new era of progress, terrorism is on its last leg here," he said.

Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim that the government's changes to the territory's governance have brought a new era of peace to Kashmir and rapid economic growth.

The implementation of those changes in 2019 was accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long internet and communications blackout to forestall protests.

Many Kashmiris are resentful of chafing restrictions on civil liberties that followed, and the BJP is only fielding candidates in a minority of seats concentrated in Hindu-majority areas.

News.Az