SRINAGAR, 2 February 2005 — The first civic elections in decades passed off peacefully yesterday in Kashmir’s two biggest cities despite a protest strike on the day and killings in the lead-up to the vote, officials and witnesses said.

Police and paramilitary forces imposed tight security after militants staged a spate of deadly attacks on candidates, party workers and rallies before the elections.

Separatist politicians called for a boycott of the vote. A separatist-sponsored strike took traffic off the streets and all businesses remained shut for the day, residents said.

Civic elections have not been held in Kashmir for the past 27 years, partly because of an insurgency but also due to fears by the previous ruling National Conference party of creating a rival power base.

The elections started on Jan. 29 in the two northern districts of Kupwara and Baramulla with 49 percent voter turnout. Yesterday, residents of the summer capital of Srinagar and the winter capital of Jammu voted to elect mayors.

In Srinagar, officials said before polling booths closed that more than 20 percent of voters had cast their ballots. “The turnout proves people want peace and development,” the region’s urban development minister Ghulam Hassan Mir told reporters.

In Jammu the turnout was 40 to 45 percent, officials said. The mainly Hindu city has seen much less violence than other areas during the revolt, which began in 1989 and has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

No major violence was reported. But in the Miasuma district of Srinagar, dozens of youths pelted riot police with stones and burnt car tires. Overnight, an election officer and a policeman were injured in a grenade attack on a polling station in Srinagar’s Batamaloo area, police said.

India’s New Army Boss Wants

to Win Kashmiri Hearts

India’s army, which has been hit by a barrage of complaints about alleged rights abuses in Kashmir, will focus on winning the hearts and minds of people in the Himalayan region, the new army chief said yesterday.

Hundreds of thousands of troops are deployed in Kashmir to quell a 15-year-old separatist revolt against New Delhi’s rule that has killed more than 45,000 people.

“If you don’t harm innocents, you are winning hearts and minds,” Gen. Joginder Jaswant Singh, India’s first army chief from the Sikh community, said a day after he took over the world’s third largest army. “We need to use minimum force and ensure minimum collateral damage so innocents are not harmed,” he said. “If people have a positive image of soldiers, it is more important than the number of terrorists killed.”

Singh, who was wounded during anti-separatists operations in Kashmir in the 1990s, said the army would seek feedback from local people and officials in insurgency-hit areas about the behavior of troops. Singh was replying to questions about allegations of abuses by troops, including the molestation of a 10-year-old girl and her mother by a major last October.