I dont know about CNN though, because I havent watched CNN. Here is teh NY Times report
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/international/asia/17KASH.html
Pressed From Two Sides, Kashmiris Turn Out to Vote
By AMY WALDMAN
UTNUSA, Kashmir, Sept. 16 — The men walked to the polls as grimly as if they were being marched to prison. They had been ordered to vote, they said, by Indian soldiers who had rousted them from their village homes.
It was not an auspicious image for State Assembly elections that India had promised would be free and fair, and that the international community had hoped would help set Kashmir on a path toward peace.
India's only Muslim majority state, Jammu and Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan, which for 13 years has backed a separatist insurgency in the state. The Indian government has been accused of rigging Kashmir's elections in the past, and of forcing voters to the polls in the face of boycotts since the insurgency began in 1989.
But even so, the sullenly obedient lines of people in Nutnusa could not be called the day's defining image. In truth, there wasn't one. In many villages, particularly where there were credible alternatives to the ruling party, the turnout was healthy, and voluntary. In many towns, the boycott was almost total — sometimes because of anti-Indian sentiment, sometimes because of threats issued by anti-Indian militants.
Significantly, considering the carefully planned attacks that punctuated the campaign period, there was no substantial violence today. Thanks to the use of electronic voting machines, there appeared to be fewer allegations of rigging than in the past. The Election Commission announced that the turnout in the 23 constituencies that voted today was 44 percent. The state's remaining 64 constituencies will vote in three phases concluding Oct. 8.
Pramod Jain, the chief electoral officer for Kashmir, pronounced the commission "fully satisfied" with the day's voting.
The turnout figure, however, masked the wide disparity in polling from place to place, as a daylong drive circling north from the capital, Srinigar, showed. In Maidan Chogal, by 8:10 a.m., more than an hour after the polls had opened, not a single vote had been cast, and residents vowed that none would be. By 9:45 a.m. in the village of Sulkoot, 263 of 1,466 eligible voters had already voted, with more arriving all the time.
At 12:20 p.m. in the town of Langate, 612 votes had been cast, of a potential 2,567. But at 2 p.m. at a polling station in the town of Baramulla, not one of 2,090 eligible voters had come.
At 3:15 p.m., 45 minutes before the polls closed, 593 votes had been cast in the village of Hanjiwera Bala, of a potential 2,063.
Nor did the turnout figure reflect how many people voted, or stayed away, willingly. The complaints of the men of Nutnusa and the nearby village of Terus could not be verified, since soldiers had largely left both villages before reporters arrived.
In the village of Chinarbagh, in a different constituency, reporters encountered a group of soldiers who villagers said were coercing them to vote, first by having a local leader issue a call over the mosque loudspeaker, and then by going house to house. The soldiers left as soon as reporters arrived.
No one, however, said soldiers had told them who to vote for. And while the Indian security forces officially denied that any coercion had occurred, unofficially, at least, one officer conceded that soldiers were forcing people to the polls to counter the militants' threats to stay away.
Those threats were certainly real. In one town, Dalina, a man who pleaded for anonymity whispered that militants had left pamphlets at the mosque before prayers last Friday, warning that "if somebody will go and vote, we will not spare even their child."
There was more pressure this year from militants than during the 1996 Assembly elections, he said, perhaps because there was more eagerness to vote this year. More militants are now also foreigners, and have less local support.
In the town of Pattan, Sharif Uddin Bhat, 22, said residents were caught between Indian security forces, who tried to force them to the polls this morning, and anti-Indian militants, who said they would be called to account tonight if they went.
But, he said, many Kashmiris are so alienated from their government that even without the militant threat they would not have voted. "What will we get out of elections?" Mr. Bhat asked.
Hope for change, Abdul Aziz Kandi and and his son Tariq might have answered. At 4 p.m., as the polls closed, they sat in their rice paddy near Hanjiwera Bala and said they had voted, willingly, because they hoped it would bring development, jobs and peace.
In the past few days, the younger Mr. Kandi said, he had been ordered around in his own village by an Afghan militant and humiliated by the Indian security forces because he was not carrying his identity card.
"Both sides make our life difficult," he said.