Iltija Mufti, a leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led a street demonstration in Srinagar on Saturday against Jammu and Kashmir's (J&K, a Himalayan union territory administered directly by India's central government) reservation policy, which she described as "reservation apartheid" that systematically excludes open-merit candidates from Kashmir. The protest followed a recent competitive examination in which only 18% of successful candidates came from the Kashmir division, and was prompted by a 2024 policy change that reduced the open-merit quota from 50% to 30% by expanding reservations for Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes — categories whose registered beneficiaries are overwhelmingly from the rival Jammu region. Mufti demanded that a Cabinet sub-committee report reviewing the policy — submitted to the Lieutenant Governor but not released publicly — be disclosed immediately, noting that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had promised to resolve the issue within six months, 21 months ago.