The Big Story: Full circle Earlier this month, results came in for Jammu and Kashmir’s District Development Council elections – the first direct polls held in the Union territory since it had been downgraded from a state the year earlier. To understand these results, we need a bit of background. On August 5, 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Delhi decided to take full control of the political situation in Jammu and Kashmir. Without engaging with the public or even their representatives in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, the Centre decided to downgrade the state to a Union territory, split it by carving out Ladakh and strip away the Constitutional guarantees of autonomy – i.e. Article 370, that had allowed for the erstwhile princely state to become a part of India.