NEW DELHI, 3 August — India said yesterday that it will hold elections in September and October in Jammu and Kashmir state even as Kashmiri separatists vowed to boycott the poll. Polling for the state elections will be held over four days in late September and early October with counting due on Oct. 10, Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh said.

The day of “the white man observing what the native does is long past,” said Lyngdoh while categorically rejecting posting of foreign observers for the election He also dismissed the possibility of holding elections in Gujarat at the same time.

He said that while foreigners, including members of election commissions and embassies of other countries, were welcome to watch the elections in their individual capacity, there was no question of them “observing” or “monitoring” the state elections.

Asserting that India had a long history of conducting free and fair elections, Lyngdoh said the country did not need to be taught any lessons by other nations on how to hold elections. “The Election Commission of India is competent to conduct free and fair elections and there is no need to think that foreigners are better equipped to do the job,” Lyngdoh said.

Asked about elections in Gujarat, Lyngdoh replied, “Let me tell you that at the moment I am only thinking about elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Gujarat is not on my mind right now.”

Kashmir is at the heart of a military standoff with Pakistan and New Delhi is battling a separatist revolt against its rule in the state. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the uprising since it began in 1989.

India sees the elections as a way to bring peace and establish its legitimacy in the Himalayan region. Separatists say the poll is bound to be rigged like others before.

Kashmir’s main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, rejected the elections, saying these could not be a substitute for a lasting solution to the dispute. “We seek a permanent settlement of the dispute in the interest of the people of the entire South Asian region,” said Abdul Gani Bhat, head of the Hurriyat, a 23-member conglomerate of political, religious and social groups which has been seeking a plebiscite to determine Kashmir’s future.

A hard-line Kashmiri group, Jamiatul Mujahedeen, called for a boycott of the elections and said it would continue to target politicians involved in the poll. “Kashmiris are required to play their role in the boycott of the forthcoming elections to show it to the world that they are not concerned or interested in this election,” a spokesman said in a statement just before New Delhi announced the election schedule.

The spokesman said that the group’s special force, Al Jabbar, had killed several political activists in the past few weeks in Kashmir and would continue the attacks. The group said last weekend it would kill candidates, voters and anyone else supporting the poll.

Suspected separatists hurled a grenade yesterday at the office of the Congress party in Srinagar, wounding a security guard. Elsewhere across the state, 14 people, including eight activists, were killed, police said. They said a teenaged girl died and four others were wounded when Pakistani troops fired artillery shells across the cease-fire line in Kupwara district, northwest of Srinagar.