NEW DELHI, Sept 14: Indian Prime Narendra Modi said "terrorism is on its last legs" in Kashmir while campaigning in the disputed territory on Saturday, a day after two soldiers were killed in a gunfight with suspected militants.
Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a rise in clashes between rebels and security forces ahead of the region's first local assembly polls in a decade, which begin next week.
The Himalayan region in India has been without an elected local government since 2019, when Modi's Hindu-nationalist government cancelled the region's semi-autonomy.
"The changes in the region in the last decade are nothing short of a dream," Modi told thousands of supporters at the rally in Doda, part of Kashmir's Hindu-majority southern region of Jammu.
"The stones that were picked up earlier to attack the police and the army are now being used to construct a new Jammu and Kashmir. This is a new era of progress, terrorism is on its last leg here," he said.
Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim that the government's changes to the territory's governance have brought a new era of peace to Kashmir and rapid economic growth.
The implementation of those changes in 2019 was accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long internet and communications blackout to forestall protests. —AFP
