India has strongly condemned Pakistan’s so-called assembly elections in the illegally occupied Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), asserting that no electoral exercise can legitimise Islamabad’s unlawful control over Indian territory.
International Desk: As Pakistan conducts what it calls legislative assembly elections in Gilgit-Baltistan, India has dismissed the exercise as a political charade aimed at masking decades of illegal occupation. New Delhi lodged a sharp protest, reiterating that Gilgit-Baltistan, along with the entire Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, remains an inseparable part of India.
In a firm statement, India emphasised that Pakistan’s attempts to confer legitimacy on its occupation through “so-called elections” are legally void and politically meaningless. New Delhi reaffirmed that Jammu and Kashmir acceded fully, legally and irrevocably to India in 1947, leaving no room for Pakistan’s claims or administrative manoeuvres.
“Pakistan cannot alter historical facts or legal realities through stage-managed electoral spectacles,” officials asserted, underscoring that the territory continues to remain under Pakistan’s illegal and forcible occupation.
Polling began at 8:00 a.m. and is scheduled to continue until 5:00 p.m. Authorities have established 1,391 polling stations across the region, including hundreds designated as sensitive and highly sensitive, reflecting persistent security concerns.
The so-called assembly consists of 33 seats, with direct elections held for 24 seats and several others reserved for women and professionals. Critics note that these elections have historically served as little more than a rubber stamp for the ruling establishment in Islamabad, with the party in power at the federal level routinely emerging victorious.
India has repeatedly maintained that Pakistan’s efforts to manipulate the status of Gilgit-Baltistan through constitutional changes, administrative restructuring or electoral exercises will never alter the ground reality: the region is Indian territory under illegal occupation, and no amount of political theatre can rewrite that fact.
