There was more support among people living on both sides of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir for joining India than Pakistan, according to an opinion poll, which also showed that the plebiscite options championed by Islamabad "offers no solution to the dispute".
In the first opinion poll conducted on both sides of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir by a leading London-based think-tank, only 43 per cent favoured independence while there was more support for joining India than Pakistan.
On the question of joining India or Pakistan, 21 per cent of the population said they would vote for the whole of Kashmir to join India, and 15 per cent said they would vote for it to join Pakistan.
Only 2 per cent of the population in Jammu & Kashmir said they would vote to join Pakistan while only 1 per cent of the population in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir said they would vote to join India, according to poll conducted by Rober
Bradnock, a visiting senior research fellow at King's College London and associate fellow at Chatham House.
"These results support the already widespread view that the plebiscite options are likely to offer no solution to the dispute.
"Nor is there evidence that an independence option could offer a straightforward alternative," Bradnock wrote in his conclusion to the paper titled 'Kashmir: Paths to Peace'.
It asked several key issues exercising the people of the region. The purpose of the poll conducted in September-October 2009 was to establish current attitudes in Kashmir on both sides of the LoC to alternative scenarios for
the resolution of the conflict.
The poll took as its starting point the assumption that Kashmiri opinion represents a vital foundation for the region's political future peace and stability, and for wider
global security.
It found that despite the widely promoted option of independence for the territory, only 43 per cent of the total population said they would vote for independence.
In only five out of 18 districts was there a majority preference for the independence of the whole of Kashmir.
Despite the complexity of the poll results, Bradnock wrote that some conclusions were clear: 81 per cent say unemployment was the most significant problem facing Kashmiris (66 per cent in PoK, 87 per cent in J&K), Government
corruption (22 per cent PoK and 68 per cent J&K), poor economic development (42 per cent PoK, 45 per cent J&K), human rights abuses (19 per cent PoK, 43 per cent J&K) and the Kashmir conflict itself (24 per cent PoK, 36 per cent J&K).
Bradnock wrote: "Any solution will depend on the Indian and Pakistani governments' commitment to achieving a permanent settlement.
"The poll suggests that such a settlement will depend critically on engaging fully with all shades of Kashmiri political opinion".
He said given that the conflict is likely to be exacerbating the economic problems of Kashmir, "a resolution will be crucial to improving the day-to-day lives of the Kashmiri people, the vast majority of whom think, as this poll demonstrates, that the conflict is 'very important' to them personally".