So I guess that makes residents of Kashmir eligible?

Kashmir was a princely state, not part of the Raj, even though India ran the post and telegraph and collected octroi at the borders. That being said, when Mangla dam was built a lot of Mirpuris migrated to Britain with work permits

Collecting taxes is generally considered a sign of sovereignty.

Octroi is a tax collected when crossing a border between jurisdictions, in this case when entering J & K and leaving British India. In this case India allowed octroi to be levied (my mistake above) by J & K on departing goods.

Thanks for those fun facts.

Yeah, i'm not going to go into what makes a country eligible, but there's a clear difference between Crimea that has nothing to do with Britain and a British colony as recent as 23 years ago that had an agreement to keep relatively british levels of freedom for a few more years yet