Indian census takers are collecting data from people living around Dal lake in Srinagar, the main district of Indian-administered Kashmir, in a new initiative to improve living conditions there.

It aims to identify what the residents lack and need ranging from healthcare to housing facilities.

But in India's only Muslim-majority state, the census is seen by many as having highly political motives.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a Kashmiri separatist leader, told Al Jazeera that most of the people that live around the lake are migrants from other Indian states and said the government is trying to change the region's demographics.

Al Jazeera's Prerna Suri reports from Kashmir.