An armed insurgency against Indian rule began in the Kashmir valley in 1989-90 and continues at lower intensity; Indian official figures put conflict deaths at roughly 41,000-45,000 since 1990, while Kashmiri civil-society organisations and the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society put the toll at 70,000 or more and document mass graves and thousands of enforced disappearances, which the Indian government disputes. Alongside the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in 1990, recorded separately, tens of thousands of families were displaced from villages along the Line of Control by cross-border shelling and militant infiltration and housed in long-term camps in Jammu. Indian security legislation, principally the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Public Safety Act, has been criticised by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which published reports on the human rights situation in 2018 and 2019 covering both Indian- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir; India rejected both reports as fallacious and motivated. In August 2019 India revoked Article 370, splitting the state into two union territories, and imposed a months-long communications blackout and mass preventive detention in which thousands were held, including three former chief ministers; Pakistan and China objected to the reorganisation, and the Indian Supreme Court upheld the revocation in December 2023.
Indian security forces, Pakistan-backed and indigenous militant groups, and civilians displaced across and within the Line of Control
The 1981 census counted 5,987,389 in Jammu and Kashmir; no census was held there in 1991 because of the insurgency, and projections put the population at roughly 7.7 million in 1990. The 2011 census counted 12,541,302. The displacement figure refers overwhelmingly to the Kashmiri Pandit exodus from the Valley beginning in January 1990, with estimates ranging from about 100,000 to 200,000 or more; Indian government relief registrations covered around 60,000 families.
The low figure is the Indian government's cumulative count of militants, security personnel and civilians killed since 1990, compiled by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The high figure comes from Kashmiri separatist and civil-society organisations, which include disappearances and unrecorded custodial deaths. Neither has been independently audited and access for independent investigators has been restricted.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society documented these forms, attributing them to Indian security forces and to armed groups respectively; India disputes the OHCHR findings.
India