India Fires Leaders in Strife-Torn Kashmir, Imposes Direct Rule

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government dismissed the administration in the northwestern state of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday and imposed direct federal rule over the strategic Himalayan region in an attempt to curb Hindu-Muslim riots.

For 20 months, a political storm has engulfed the area, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and center of a bitter quarrel with neighboring rival Pakistan.

India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir in 1948 and 1965, and the region remains in dispute. India now administers two-thirds of Kashmir as the state of Jammu and Kashmir, with a population of about 5 million. Pakistan holds the rest.

The New Delhi-appointed state governor, Jag Mohan, cited an erosion in keeping peace, allegedly involving pro-Pakistan Muslim secessionists, in formally dismissing Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammed Shah.

Gandhi’s Congress-I Party earlier Friday withdrew its support from Shah’s breakaway regional party, reducing it to a tiny minority in the 76-seat state assembly.

New Elections Urged

Farouk Abdullah, Shah’s brother-in-law and political rival, called for dissolution of the assembly and new elections.

Shah said his faction would merge with Abdullah’s party and allow Abdullah to form a new government.

But Abdullah, rejecting this, told supporters in Srinagar, the state capital, “Dissolution of the assembly and holding of free elections is the only way to tackle the situation.”

In demanding Shah’s ouster, national lawmakers and newspapers accused him of failing to act in recent Hindu-Muslim riots, the worst in Kashmir since the subcontinent gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Kashmir police say pro-Pakistan Muslim separatists instigated the rioting and arson against the state’s minority Hindu Brahmin community. Newspaper reports said 43 Hindu temples were burned.