In 2006, while staying at Kashmir House in Islamabad’s affluent F-5 Sector, a stark contrast with its Delhi counterpart struck me. Where Delhi’s Kashmir House harbored aging Ambassador cars, Islamabad’s elite flaunted fleets of Pajeros, high-end SUVs then uncommon in South Asia. A young journalist from Bagh, a region within Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir (POJK), wryly noted this was the ‘Pajero culture’ dominating the region—a clear sign of the deep-seated elitism defining its political landscape.
For decades, Pakistan has presented Pakistan-Administered Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) to the world as an independent entity, complete with its own constitution, a Prime Minister, and a President. However, the diverse historical and political realities of Jammu & Kashmir, a princely state unified in the 19th century, tell a different story. POJK, a part of this undivided state controlled by Pakistan since 1947, often escapes deeper scrutiny. While Pakistan labels it ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’ (Independent Jammu and Kashmir) and highlights its legislative assembly’s power to elect leaders, the true autonomy of the region is far more constrained.
Global Spotlight on the Territory
Recent violent events have thrust POJK back into the global spotlight, exposing a political system failing its people in terms of accountability and transparency. Reports from independent sources indicate at least eleven protesters and three police officers have died in clashes, despite government calls for dialogue. A communication blackout further shrouds the region. The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC) leads these protests, demanding an end to special allowances for officials and parity in subsidized electricity and wheat prices with other parts of Pakistan. JKJAAC leaders accuse authorities of breaking promises, mobilizing a broad base of traders, transporters, lawyers, students, and other community groups. Formed in September 2023, JKJAAC acts as a unified front for widespread public anger over economic mismanagement, inequality, and elite power concentration. Their demands broadly encompass two interconnected areas: immediate economic relief and fundamental structural and constitutional reforms.
Specifically, JKJAAC advocates for immediate economic relief, including subsidized electricity and wheat prices consistent with other Pakistani regions. They also demand the elimination of lavish perks for ministers and bureaucrats, ensuring free and equitable access to education and healthcare. For long-term change, JKJAAC seeks judicial and governance restructuring, and improved infrastructure like an airport. Beyond these economic measures, the committee pushes for significant structural reforms. These include abolishing the 12 reserved “refugee seats” in the POJK Legislative Assembly, which many see as Islamabad’s direct leverage. They also call for a smaller executive, an end to elite and bureaucratic privileges, and guarantees that local communities benefit directly from POJK’s abundant hydropower and natural resources. Furthermore, the movement aims to eliminate quota systems that disproportionately harm local residents.
During the recent violent demonstrations, JKJAAC leaders allege at least 11 protesters were killed and over 200 injured, “all suffering gunshot wounds.” Authorities, however, deny these claims, stating their offers to address demands were ignored. Officials assert that roughly 90% of demands, including electricity and local government reforms, and the withdrawal of protest cases, were agreed upon during negotiations. JKJAAC leader Syed Hafeez Hamdani countered, “The claim that our demands have been accepted is contrary to the facts… If our demands had been accepted, we would have had no reason to keep protesting.” These protests, therefore, extend beyond mere local grievances; they expose Islamabad’s profound structural control, maintained through constitutional frameworks that have dictated the complex relationship between Islamabad and Muzaffarabad since 1947. This intricate history is frequently oversimplified, leading to criticism of the system being facilely dismissed as “India-sponsored.”
The Contentious Demand for Abolishing ‘Refugee Seats’
Central to the current impasse is the contentious demand to abolish ‘refugee seats.’ POJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwar ul Haq admitted a “deadlock” on these seats, inseparable from the Kashmir movement. To grasp their significance, one must delve into history and constitutional law. The POJK Constitution reserves 12 out of 45 elected “general” Assembly seats for those who migrated from the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and settled in Pakistan. Crucially, these constituencies often represent Pakistani citizens with minimal connection to POJK’s daily life. Nine of these 12 seats are located in Punjab, and the other three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh—none within POJK itself. This setup provides Islamabad with a powerful, often decisive, tool to influence the Assembly and, by extension, POJK’s entire political sphere.
The demographic breakdown of these 12 seats reveals a significant representational imbalance. While six seats each are allocated to refugees from the culturally, ethnically, and linguistically distinct provinces of Kashmir and Jammu, this distribution is largely nonsensical. In 1947, migration from the Kashmir Valley was minimal.
For instance, the 2021 election saw 373,652 voters registered in the six constituencies for Jammu refugees, but only 29,804 (a mere 7%) in those for Kashmir Valley refugees. In 1947, roughly 80% of migrants from the Indian side of Jammu & Kashmir settled in Pakistani Punjab, not POJK. This was due to the Jammu plains’ proximity to Sialkot and cultural ties to Punjab, along with better economic prospects in Punjab compared to POJK.
Notable figures like economist Mehboob-ul-Haq, architect of the Human Development Index, and renowned singer Malika Pukhraj, were both Jammu migrants who settled in Pakistan. Indeed, the majority of Muslim migration originated from the Dogri and Punjabi-speaking Jammu plains. Even pre-1947, significant populations in the Jammu plains, both Muslim and Hindu, had strong familial, trade, educational, and employment ties to neighboring areas of what is now Pakistani Punjab. Geographically, Jammu city, the winter capital, is less than an hour from Sialkot and under two hours from Lahore, Pakistan’s Punjabi capital. Srinagar, the summer capital, is a far more arduous 10-12 hour journey from Lahore, underscoring the deep regional connections that shaped migration patterns.
Despite the equal allocation of six seats each for refugees from Kashmir and Jammu provinces—two distinct cultural, ethnic, and linguistic regions—the actual representation is absurdly skewed. Data from the 2006 Assembly elections showed 546,031 registered voters for Jammu’s six seats, compared to a mere 35,256 for Kashmir province refugees’ six seats. This meant Kashmir province voters accounted for only 0.06% of the total migrant vote bank. Even within Jammu’s six seats, constituencies were uneven, with LA5 in Rawalpindi having 5,000 voters and LA6 having 150,000. Effectively, elections for these refugee constituencies hold minimal practical representational or legislative value, as the descendants of the 1947 migrants are largely well-integrated into Pakistani society, especially in Pakistani Punjab.
Historically, the party in power in Islamabad has consistently secured the majority of these refugee seats, thereby gaining a significant advantage in forming the government in Muzaffarabad, POJK’s capital.
For example, in 1975, Zulfikar Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leveraged these seats to topple the Muslim Conference government. By 1990, when the Muslim Conference swept all 12 refugee seats, then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif openly boasted about ‘gifting’ them to Sardar Qayoom, the Muslim Conference founder. This trend continued in the 2021 POJK election, with PTI winning 75% of refugee seats versus 48% of the 33 directly elected seats within POJK. As far back as December 2007, Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry, now POJK President, a Jat from Mirpur, called for the abolition of these 12 seats. He argued that Pakistani ruling parties routinely manipulate these elections, turning them into a tool to benefit Islamabad’s agenda. Crucially, this system maintains a biased pan-Pakistan narrative on Jammu and Kashmir, hindering a realistic approach to the Kashmir issue and the broader India-Pakistan peace process.
The protesters’ call to dismantle elitism is particularly urgent within a system where institutional structures facilitate the elite’s control over crucial appointments and decisions. The Islamabad-based POJK Council has historically wielded significant authority, both formal and informal, over key positions in the judiciary, bureaucracy, and constitutional bodies. This includes influencing the selection of the Chief Election Commissioner (appointed by the POJK President based on the Council Chairman’s advice) and, more broadly, advising on judicial appointments to the High Court and Supreme Court of POJK. The Council has also controlled bureaucratic postings within its own Secretariat, a practice critics argue often bypasses the POJK government’s authority and fuels favoritism.
Beyond appointments, the Council’s historical influence extended to administrative oversight, fiscal management, and a broad range of legislative subjects, including taxation, natural resources, tourism, infrastructure, and major development projects, all under its jurisdiction of 52 subjects. Although the 13th Amendment to the POJK constitution in 2018 aimed to transfer many of these powers to the POJK Assembly or directly to Islamabad, the Council’s structural role in key appointments and oversight remains a highly controversial and disputed issue.
POJK Assembly: Often Sidelined and Powerless?
Within this framework, the elected POJK Legislative Assembly is frequently marginalized. Despite its mandate to legislate on state subjects (those not reserved for the federal government), it lacks comparable authority over appointments, major administrative decisions, or control of constitutional bodies. The Assembly does not appoint judges or constitutional commissioners; these powers reside with, or are advised by, the Council. Consequently, while the Assembly can debate and influence policy, the true levers of power—from the leadership of the Election Commission to senior judicial and bureaucratic appointments—often remain beyond its grasp. This structural imbalance fuels the protesters’ argument: democratic institutions, like the Assembly, can become mere shells while elite executives entrenched in the Council and federal government retain decisive control.
Despite being presented as a joint administrative mechanism, the POJK Council largely functions as a tool of control rather than genuine self-governance. Its very composition reveals this imbalance: the Prime Minister of Pakistan chairs it, with the POJK President as Vice-Chairman, but Islamabad directly appoints the majority of its members.
Specifically, six of its eleven members are directly nominated by the Government of Pakistan, with only five elected by the POJK Legislative Assembly. This arrangement guarantees that Pakistan’s federal authorities maintain decisive sway over the territory’s legislative, financial, and administrative affairs. Far from empowering local representatives, the Council actively limits the elected POJK Assembly’s authority, ensuring that crucial areas like natural resources, taxation, and key appointments remain under Islamabad’s close supervision. This effectively highlights POJK’s constrained political autonomy, with the Council acting as the federal government’s primary mechanism for managing and controlling the region.
It’s crucial to note that the core demands of these protests have not breached Pakistan’s institutional redlines concerning POJK or its broader official stance on Jammu and Kashmir. For example, the constitutional and procedural framework governing past POJK Assembly elections shatters the myth of the region’s independence, a claim often made by Pakistan. Even larger constitutional provisions contradict Pakistan’s official and diplomatic assertions, notably Article 257 of the Pakistani constitution, which states: “When the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir decide to accede to Pakistan, the relationship between Pakistan and the State shall be determined in accordance with the wishes of the people of that State.”
Conversely, Part 2 of Section 7 of the 1974 POJK Constitution explicitly states that “no person or political party in Azad Jammu and Kashmir shall be permitted to propagate against or take part in activities prejudicial or detrimental to the ideology of the state’s accession to Pakistan.” Further, Section 5(2)(vii) of the POJK Legislative Assembly Election Ordinance, 1970, disqualifies anyone advocating against the ideology of Pakistan, the state’s accession to Pakistan, or Pakistan’s sovereignty and integrity. Effectively, no one can even participate in the POJK Legislative Assembly election without first signing an affidavit pledging allegiance to Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan.
Numerous elections have seen parties like the All Parties Nationalist Alliance (APNA), which advocate for an independent Jammu and Kashmir, barred from participation due to their refusal to sign this mandatory affidavit. Moreover, Islamabad retains the authority to dismiss any POJK government. Article 53 of the POJK Constitution grants the federal government emergency powers over POJK, mirroring those it holds over other Pakistani provinces. A historical instance saw K. Khurshid, a Kashmiri-speaking POJK President and former private secretary to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, forced to resign and subsequently jailed by a mid-level police official during Ayub Khan’s military rule, simply for publicly expressing views contrary to Pakistan’s official stance on J&K.
Indeed, protests have frequently marked POJK’s political history. An early example is the Sudhans rebellion in central Bagh during the immediate post-Partition years. The Sudhans, a prominent local clan, resisted what they perceived as exclusion from power and heavy-handed interference from Islamabad. This localized uprising underscored deep-seated resentment over unequal representation, economic neglect, and external authority. Later, in the 1960s, Mirpur saw massive protests against the Mangla Dam’s construction, which displaced nearly 81,000 people, initiating a new wave of grievances. Mirpuri migration boasts a complex history: an initial wave a century ago saw men become seamen in Britain, followed by a second driven by the dam’s displacements. Supported by strong family ties, this diaspora has continued to grow, even providing material support to Kashmir Valley militants after 1989. Consequently, this community holds diverse political aspirations.
Therefore, a realistic understanding demands acknowledging the complex geographical, military, sociological, and historical realities on the ground. It would be misguided to interpret these protests as a sign of POJK’s future alignment with India. The Line of Control’s current position is rooted in profound ethnic, geographic, and historical factors. In 1947, POJK’s political landscape diverged significantly from the Kashmir Valley, where Sheikh Abdullah’s popularity and rejection of the two-nation theory shaped events. POJK possesses a distinct ethnic and linguistic foundation, sharing closer cultural, ethnic, and linguistic ties with adjacent Pakistani Punjab districts like Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Jhelum, and Sialkot, complete with intertwined familial and caste connections.
In central POJK, local Muslims, many ex-British Army servicemen, rebelled against Maharaja Hari Singh for various reasons, a movement bolstered by a tribal invasion from the North-West Frontier Province. This convergence led to the swift collapse of the Maharaja’s forces and de facto control by the Pakistani army, a scenario unlike the Kashmir Valley. Geographically, POJK borders Pakistan’s major cities, Islamabad and Lahore. Travel between Mirpur and Muzaffarabad within POJK takes eight hours directly, but half that time via Islamabad, a reflection of the region’s challenging hilly terrain. While protests against Pakistani leadership have been frequent, a renewed focus on the region, as explored in my book, demands moving beyond simplistic narratives. A nuanced and granular understanding of POJK’s socio-political realities—its complex constitutional ties with Pakistan, geographic specificities, history, and the diverse aspirations of its diaspora—is essential.
The ‘Pajero culture’ I witnessed in Islamabad almost two decades ago transcended mere displays of wealth; it symbolized a deeply entrenched elite order that has long defined POJK’s politics. The current wave of protests is not an anomaly but a direct consequence of this system, where elite privileges, manipulated ‘refugee seats,’ and constitutional limitations have cemented Islamabad’s dominance, stifling local accountability. What’s happening today is less about isolated economic complaints and more about a fundamental struggle against a political culture that has systematically denied the people of POJK a genuine voice in their own destiny. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to avoid oversimplifying these events; the underlying realities are far more intricate, stemming from both local governance failures and the unique constitutional bond with Islamabad.
(Luv Puri, the author, has written two books on Jammu and Kashmir: “Uncovered Face of Militancy” and “Across the Line of Control,” the latter published by Columbia University Press and based on extensive field research in the region.)