The Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) — the proscribed civil rights alliance whose campaign began in 2023 around electricity tariffs and wheat subsidies in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POK) — has, despite a formal ban on the organisation under the Anti-Terrorism Act 2014 and a sweeping security crackdown, launched its planned long march from Bhimber in Mirpur Division toward the regional capital Muzaffarabad. The march set off on 9 June, with caravans expected to camp overnight in Rawalakot before continuing onward. Local journalists have estimated participation in the thousands; the POK Police put the figure at around 500.

The territory-wide wheel-jam and shutterdown strike that began on 7 June has now entered its fourth day. Commercial centres across Muzaffarabad and the Poonch Division remain closed, vehicle traffic on the city's main roads is reported as "almost nonexistent", internet and mobile data services remain suspended across Muzaffarabad, Rawalakot, Poonch, Mirpur and the Neelum Valley, and Section 144 — prohibiting public gatherings — has been imposed across all of POK in the days since the violence in Rawalakot on 7 June.

Where the toll stands

A reconstructed picture, drawing on the Pakistani daily Dawn, Al Jazeera, AFP, Reuters and the analytical assessment of Ajit Kumar Singh of the Institute for Conflict Management published this week, places the cumulative death toll from the 7 June clash in Rawalakot at at least 12 — eight civilians and four police personnel, with 73 wounded, including 23 security forces personnel and 50 civilians. POK officials confirmed the bulk of these figures to Pakistani media in the immediate aftermath of the clash, with subsequent reports updating the civilian count as injuries from the violence developed.

These are the verified figures. The flow of independent information from the territory itself remains constrained by the communications blackout, and rights monitors have stated that an independent assessment of conditions on the ground will be possible only when mobile and internet services are restored.

The trigger and the two narratives

The immediate trigger for the 7 June violence was the death of Shahzaib Habib, a JAAC activist who was allegedly shot during a confrontation with security forces on the night of 5 June. The same night, the POK government formally proscribed JAAC. Habib's body was moved to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) mortuary in Rawalakot. A funeral planned for 6 June was postponed; on 7 June, JAAC supporters gathered outside the CMH in connection with his death.

What happened next is contested. The POK administration's account, articulated by Poonch District Commissioner Sardar Waheed Khan and Inspector General of Police Liaqat Ali Malik, holds that JAAC supporters opened fire on security personnel and besieged the hospital, with four police officers and a civilian passerby killed before security forces responded, after which six protesters died. The Commissioner has stated that protesters used automatic weapons and petrol bombs against the police, and that the state's action was aimed at restoring law and order.

JAAC's account, articulated by alliance chairman Shaukat Nawaz Mir in a video statement on X, describes the incident as a "massacre" of unarmed protesters who had gathered around Shahzaib Habib's body. The alliance has rejected the police characterisation of armed escalation by protesters and has called for an independent investigation.

The Muzaffarabad Agreement and its breakdown

A central element of the present crisis — and one that explains why a movement organised originally around electricity tariffs is now in confrontation with the state under counter-terrorism law — is the breakdown of an earlier accord.

In September-October 2025, POK was paralysed by a similar week-long civil shutdown, in which more than ten people died and over 100 were injured. That episode ended with the signing of the Muzaffarabad Agreement, also known as the October 4 Accord, on 4 October 2025 — a written agreement between the POK government, federal authorities, and JAAC representatives.

The Accord covered both economic and political ground. On the economic side, it committed to compensation equivalent to police salaries for families of those killed in the 2025 protests; PKR 1 million for those injured by gunfire; government jobs for the families of the deceased; PKR 10 billion for electricity infrastructure investment; the continuation of wheat and electricity subsidies; and tax reforms. On the political side, it included judicial inquiries into specific incidents, action against personnel involved in violence, and commitments to improve healthcare, education and infrastructure. Critically, it also committed to the formation of a committee to examine the status of the 12 reserved seats — the political demand that has since become central to the current mobilisation.

The 90-day implementation deadline for the agreement expired in January 2026 without full delivery, according to JAAC. Authorities have subsequently claimed that 36 of the 38 demands in the broader JAAC charter were accepted or implemented; JAAC has rejected that characterisation. On 31 May 2026, with negotiations between a federal ministerial team and JAAC leadership having yielded no further breakthrough, the alliance announced an indefinite strike beginning 9 June.

The constitutional question: 12 seats in a 53-member Assembly

At the centre of the political demand currently driving the mobilisation is the question of 12 reserved seats in the POK Legislative Assembly — a 53-member legislature in which these reserved seats represent more than a fifth of total membership.

These seats are designated for Kashmiri refugees who settled in Pakistan-administered areas after the 1947 partition and after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war. They are voted on through procedures outside Muzaffarabad. JAAC's case is that this architecture allows mainstream Pakistani political parties — headquartered in Islamabad and Lahore rather than in POK — to influence the formation of governments in Muzaffarabad, diluting the political weight of the territory's resident population. Some JAAC voices have additionally alleged that "fake State Subject certificates" are used to claim refugee status for political advantage.

The POK Supreme Court, ruling this week on a reference filed by POK President Chaudhry Latif Akbar, has stated in an advisory opinion that the 12 reserved seats are part of the territory's constitutional architecture and cannot be abolished without a formal constitutional amendment — the Court observing that any such amendment was "not a concession to be wrested" from the government. The ruling effectively closes the most immediate judicial route to JAAC's central demand, and is one of the principal escalation factors of the past week.

Pakistan's federal Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has publicly defended the reserved seats as a "historical and constitutional reality" and has characterised the demand for their abolition as an attempt to undermine the electoral process.

The wider political shift

What began in 2023 as a civic alliance organised around immediate economic grievances — electricity prices, wheat subsidies, hydropower revenue distribution — has, over the past 18 months, evolved into something larger. The Wikipedia entry for JAAC, drawing on extensive Pakistani reporting, captures the shift: the alliance's "rise to prominence stems from its ability to unite fragmented, localised grievances over economic hardship into a coordinated, statewide political force, fundamentally challenging the political status quo."

In the analytical assessment of Ajit Kumar Singh, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Conflict Management, the latest mobilisation marks "a significant shift in the character of public mobilisation in PoJK" — from economically-anchored protest to a political challenge centred on representation and what protesters describe as Islamabad's disproportionate influence over regional affairs. Singh's analysis traces the trajectory to "longstanding structural issues" — including the gap between the territory's official designation as "occupied" (free) Kashmir and the ground reality of political and administrative decision-making concentrated in Islamabad.

The international dimension

International reaction has begun to develop, though it remains limited. A group of British parliamentarians has raised concerns regarding the crackdown, the arrests of activists, and the communications restrictions in the territory. Islamabad has dismissed the British parliamentary criticism as "interference in internal affairs". The US Embassy in Islamabad has issued an advisory to American citizens recommending caution about travel to PoJK.

Within the wider South Asian diaspora, demonstrations have been held in Bradford, Birmingham, London and other cities in the United Kingdom under the banner of the Jammu and Kashmir National Independence Alliance (JKNIA), with rights activists, political figures and diaspora leaders raising concerns about conditions in the territory.

Internationally, the situation is being followed by foreign missions, regional press, and rights organisations including Access Now's Keep It On coalition (which tracks internet shutdowns globally), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, all of which have, in past episodes, expressed concern about the use of communications blackouts and counter-terrorism legislation against civic movements in Pakistan.

What it means for the 27 July election

The POK general election is scheduled for 27 July 2026. The Legislative Assembly of 53 members is to be reconstituted through that election. The current situation places the credibility of that election under significant pressure.

JAAC's central demand — the abolition of the 12 reserved seats — has now been ruled out by the Supreme Court as a procedural matter, available only through constitutional amendment. The alliance itself is proscribed under counter-terrorism law. Its leadership faces arrest. The communications environment under which any campaign would normally operate is suspended. And the population in the territory has experienced a violent week.

Whether the election proceeds on schedule and with substantive participation, whether candidates aligned with JAAC are able to contest, and whether the international and domestic credibility of the result is intact — these are questions whose answers will materialise only in the next several weeks.

The road ahead

The most immediate test is what happens as the long march advances from Rawalakot toward Muzaffarabad over 10 and 11 June. POK authorities have publicly committed to preventing the march from reaching the regional capital and have indicated they will treat any large gathering as an unlawful assembly under the ATA. JAAC has publicly committed to continuing. The interaction of these two positions, in a territory under Section 144, with internet blackout and security forces heavily deployed, will determine the immediate trajectory.

Beyond the next 48 hours, the harder questions are structural. Whether the implementation gap on the October 2025 Muzaffarabad Agreement is addressed substantively. Whether the constitutional question of representation in POK — including but not limited to the 12 refugee seats — finds a political resolution within the existing framework, or whether it continues to drive recurring mobilisation. Whether the July election holds. And whether the underlying economic conditions that originally drove the mobilisation — electricity costs, wheat subsidies, hydropower revenue arrangements, employment — receive policy responses commensurate with the level of mobilisation they have sustained.

What the past week in POK has clarified, in the assessment of Singh and other regional analysts, is that the "uncomfortable reality" of governance in the territory — projected as occupied Kashmir but, in protesters' view, controlled from Islamabad — is no longer a quiet structural condition. It is now the explicit centre of political conflict in the region. How that conflict is managed — whether through political accommodation, judicial intervention, sustained security action, or some combination — will define the territory's trajectory through the remainder of 2026 and beyond.

For now, what stands on the morning of 10 June 2026 is this: POK in its fourth day of a complete shutdown, a long march of unknown final size moving toward the regional capital despite a formal ban, twelve confirmed dead in last Sunday's clash, the POK Supreme Court having closed the immediate judicial route on the principal demand, communications largely suspended across the territory, an election scheduled six weeks away, and international attention beginning to gather around what has become, in scale and stakes, the most serious civic crisis in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in years.