Kashmir history

As rebellion continues along the borders, on October 22, 1947, members of Afridi and other Pashtun groups begin to converge along the border and enter Baramulla to aid Kashmiris but falter without any clear leadership.

India and Pakistan sign the Shimla Agreement, which recognizes the ceasefire line of 1949 as the Line of Control (LoC). The Shimla Agreement includes a clause stating that the final settlement of Kashmir will be decided bilaterally.

Bakshi gets the accession formally ratified in 1954.

Meanwhile, the process of formalizing Jammu and Kashmir’s status as a state took several years and was completed only in 1957.

India backtracks on its promise of the plebiscite, even though Nehru would continue to make statements about India’s pledge to Kashmiris until 1959.

The two major institutes of higher education are the University of Kashmir at Srinagar and the University of Jammu, both founded in 1969.

The old Jamaat Islami, having contested the elections since 1971, wins only one seat in the Assembly.

The Indian- and Pakistani-administered portions are divided by a “line of control” agreed to in 1972, although neither country recognizes it as an international boundary.

On May 29, 1977 Amanullah Khan, Abdul Khaliq Ansari and few others from the Azad Kashmiri diaspora in Britain form the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in Birmingham.

The most prominent is a violent insurgency against Indian rule in the Kashmir Valley that began in 1989 and has continued, in ebbs and flows, over the past three decades.

Yasin Malik, its second chief commander, has been in prison since 1990.

The Indian government hangs a Kashmiri man, Afzal Guru, in prison since the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, on February 9.

One especially powerful earthquake in 2005 devastated Muzaffarabad, which is the administrative centre of Azad Kashmir, and adjacent areas including parts of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state (now Jammu and Kashmir union territory) and Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

Several of them join Geelani’s faction, known as APHC (G). The NC, which has been in government in coalition with the Congress since 2008, loses elections.

In addition, a route through the Pir Panjal Range that followed the ancient Mughal Road opened in 2010, significantly reducing the travel distance between Punch and the vale.