Three workers from Modi’s ruling party shot dead in Kashmir as anger erupts at controversial land law

Several BJP workers have been attacked in the region after the national ruling party unilaterally withdrew the autonomy of Kashmir

File image: Indian government announced a new land law angering many in Kashmir  (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Three workers of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were shot dead in Kashmir late on Thursday, amid simmering tensions over a controversial new land ownership law.

The attack was reportedly carried out by separatist militants in the Kulgam area of what is now the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

The police of J&K in a statement said: “Today at about 8.20pm, Kulgam Police received information about a terror crime incident at village YK Pora, where terrorists had fired upon three BJP workers.”

All three young men were identified as residents of Kashmir. Fida Hussain Yatoo was the party’s district youth general secretary, while the other two were named as Umer Rashid Beigh and Umer Ramzan Hajam.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to express his condolences and said the deceased men were “bright youngsters doing excellent work in J&K”.

Former chief ministers of the erstwhile state, which has now been split into two centrally-controlled union territories, also condemned the attacks.

Kashmir Police Chief Vijay Kumar told the Reuters news agency that a hunt had been launched for the militants responsible.

It comes days after the Modi government issued formal notification of a new law allowing people from the rest of the country to buy land in the disputed region of Kashmir.

Many Kashmiris have been simmering with anger since the nationalist government in August 2019 annulled the decades-old autonomy of India's only Muslim-majority region, and then detained several local political leaders, including former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, to suppress dissent.

The government says it is trying to better integrate Kashmir with the rest of the country and make laws uniform across states, though the region has since been under strict lockdown and communication blackout for months. 

Militants, though dwarfed in numbers by the vast Indian paramilitary presence in the region, have stepped up attacks on local members of Modi's BJP.

Several BJP leaders have been attacked since the Modi government’s clampdown began. Earlier this year, five other BJP workers were killed in Kashmir, prompting the police to move hundreds of village leaders who are close to the party to high-security zones.

The mountainous Kashmir region is divided between India and Pakistan through a Line of Control (LoC) after both counties fought each other in a war in 1972, though both countries claim it in its entirety. China controls the northern Aksai-Chin area of the former kingdom of Kashmir.