Mali, March 12 -- Twelve district presidents filed into a modest conference room somewhere in this lake-ringed city on Thursday morning, summoned by a man named Farooq Ahmad Ashai. By afternoon, they had committed their association to something that shouldn't feel remarkable but, in this place, always does: a vote.

Ashai, convener of the Private Schools Association Jammu & Kashmir's Election Commission, had called the gathering to solve a practical problem.

The PSAJK's district bodies, its organizational backbone across the valley, needed new leadership. The question was how to choose it, and how quickly.

The answer, hammered out over hours of discussion, came with a hard stop: March 30.

All district elections, in every corner of th...