A proposed move by the Waqf Board in Indian-administered Kashmir to introduce uniform Friday sermons at mosques across the region has drawn backlash from politicians and religious leaders, who have accused the government of trying to assert control over Muslim religious spaces.

The Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board is headed by Darakshan Andrabi, a local leader associated with the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government stripped the region of its previous semi-autonomous status in 2019. Jammu and Kashmir was also partitioned into two federally governed territories, instead of functioning as a full-fledged state as it used to.

A scholar from the mountainous Rajouri district, some 180km (110 miles) from the region’s biggest city of Srinagar, who had attended the meeting online, told Al Jazeera that Andrabi had passed instructions stating that only a pre-approved sermon drafted by a committee of senior-most scholars would be uniformly recited at the mosque pulpits on Fridays.