India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting the main city in Himalayan Kashmir to campaign for his party in the staggered local election in a first such vote since New Delhi stripped the disputed region’s semi-autonomy in 2019.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, residents are voting in elections that some hope will lead to restoration of the territory's statehood, which ended when it became a federally governed territory in 2019.

Voters queued outside polling stations in India's Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday to vote in the first provincial election being held in a decade in the Himalayan region that has grappled with years of militant violence.