India grants 83,000 domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris in disputed region

Move mirrors Israeli-style settlement tactics, aimed at eroding indigenous Kashmiri identity and autonomy

SRINAGAR, Kashmir (MNTV) — The Indian government has granted over 83,700 domicile certificates to non-local individuals in Jammu and Kashmir over the past two years — a move that underscores India’s systematic settler colonial strategy in the Muslim-majority region.

The figures were disclosed in a written parliamentary response to lawmaker Waheed Ur Rehman Para, who has demanded an investigation into the mass issuance. 

The data reveals a deliberate attempt to reconfigure the region’s demographics by settling outsiders in a territory recognized by the United Nations as disputed.

Official data shows that these 83,742 certificates to non-state subjects are part of a broader issuance of approximately 3.5 million domicile certificates in just two years.

These domicile certificates are not merely administrative documents — they are political weapons. 

They grant land ownership and access to government jobs, rights previously reserved for locals. 

By expanding these rights to non-Kashmiris, India is engineering a demographic shift that seeks to erase the region’s indigenous Muslim identity and entrench Hindu dominance.

This campaign began in earnest after August 2019, when India unilaterally revoked Article 370 — the constitutional provision that granted Jammu and Kashmir limited autonomy and protected its demographic composition. 

Within a year, over 25,000 domicile certificates were issued to outsiders. 

Among the latest cases, 52 non-local men in Beerwah tehsil of Budgam district received domicile status through marriage to local women — a loophole exploited to justify demographic intrusion.

While Indian authorities claim these moves foster “integration,” the reality is starkly different. 

India is not integrating Kashmir — it is colonizing it.

The parallels with Israel’s occupation of Palestine are impossible to ignore. 

Like Zionist settlements in the West Bank, India is building “facts on the ground” in Kashmir — bureaucratic and legal structures designed to dispossess the native population and replace them with politically loyal settlers. 

According to India’s 2011 census, Muslims constituted 68.31% of Jammu and Kashmir’s population of 12.5 million. 

That demographic balance is now under siege.

By weaponizing domicile laws, New Delhi is reshaping the political future of Kashmir — not through ballots, but through bulldozers and birth certificates.