The Indian government on Monday rushed through a presidential decree to scrap Kashmir's special status, tightening its grip on a fractious region also claimed by
Pakistan in the most significant change in seven decades to affect the Muslim-majority state.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi Hindu-nationalist party also moved a bill proposing to divide the territory into two regions to be directly ruled by New Delhi.
The government imposed a security lockdown on the Indian-administered part of Kashmir in the early hours of Monday after deploying tens of thousands of troops in the past week, claiming there was a terror threat.