Progress over protests: Time to lock in Ladakh's gains (IANS Analysis)

New Delhi, Sep 13 (IANS) On September 9, a sub-committee of the Union Home Ministry met representatives from Ladakh in New Delhi. The next day, Sonam Wangchuk gave the government one week. If no assurance came, a padyatra would begin on September 19 and run to September 24, with a wider agitation to follow. The Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance said the talks had produced nothing new.

Others in the same room described it very differently.

Thupstan Chhewang, a former Member of Parliament who led the Leh Apex Body until he resigned last year, called the talks fruitful. He said points of consensus were never placed before the people, and that the delay came not from the Home Ministry but from differences within the Apex Body and the KDA over sequencing.

He questioned the need for a fresh agitation when dialogue was producing results.

Ladakh’s Member of Parliament, Mohmad Haneefa Jan, said the Home Ministry was serious about the legislative setup and about safeguards under Article 371. He stressed the urgency of restarting recruitment for young people who have waited years for an examination.

What the September 9 meeting settled

There will be a Union Territory-level elected body with legislative, executive and financial powers. Its members will be chosen by direct election from constituencies rather than indirectly through the hill councils.

Every representative from the Apex Body and the KDA pressed for direct election, and the Centre accepted it. Delimitation will be separate for Ladakh, and constitutional protection has been accepted for land, culture, heritage, environment and natural resources under a special provision of Article 371.

Earlier rounds had already delivered. Eighty-five per cent of government posts are reserved for locals, eighty per cent of them for Scheduled Tribes.

A domicile framework is in place, five official languages are notified, and a third of hill council seats are reserved for women.

That covers a large part of what the movement asked for. Is this a government that has made no progress?

Why no draft arrived

What the meeting handed over instead was a set of questions on dividing powers between the hill councils and the new territorial body. This is the one thing still genuinely unsettled, inside the movement as much as between it and Delhi.

A strong territorial Assembly and strong hill councils both claim the same subjects. Land, forests and local administration cannot sit in two places at once. Until Ladakh answers which powers belong where, nobody can write the clause.

Let the existing system work

In August, the administration began the panchayat election process with a revision of electoral rolls. Ladakh has 193 panchayats, ninety-five in Leh and ninety-eight in Kargil, and hill council elections are also due.

Wangchuk and sections of the KDA have argued that these polls should wait until the territorial body is created. That argument does not hold.

Ladakh’s structure has three tiers: the panchayat at the base, the hill council above it and the proposed territorial body on top. The lower two have existed for years. Leh has had a hill council since 1995 and Kargil since 2003, with panchayats functioning alongside. Neither was created by this negotiation, and neither depends on it.

A panchayat election changes nothing about what the territorial body will look like.

A delay changes a great deal. Village and hill council seats stay empty, money that moves through those institutions stops moving, and the five new districts keep waiting for the councils they were promised.

The same applies to the demand that the administration take no major decisions until the settlement is final. That would freeze recruitment under the new reservation rules, which took years of agitation to win.

It would hold up domicile certification, road tendering and winter health postings. It would stall the notification of councils for Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra and Changthang. These are Ladakh’s gains, not Delhi’s projects, and a freeze would stop them from reaching people who were never in the room.

The shortcut that looks like protection

The oldest demand is the Sixth Schedule, treated as a shortcut because it is familiar and already in the Constitution.

But it creates district councils, not a legislature. Ladakh has had district councils for decades, so adding the Schedule tomorrow would still leave it with no Assembly and no territorial law-making power.

There is a further point, rarely made. Parliament can amend the Sixth Schedule by ordinary law, and such a change is not treated as an amendment of the Constitution. A special provision under Article 371 can be altered only by constitutional amendment, needing a two-thirds majority in both Houses.

On how easily a future government could undo the protection, the familiar instrument is the weaker one.

The question Ladakh should ask

The approach now being taken is all or nothing. Everything must be settled together, or nothing moves. No negotiation of this size has worked that way.

The sensible course is the opposite. Lock in what has been agreed and put the elected body, direct elections, separate delimitation and the Article 371 safeguards beyond doubt.

Then carry on with what remains: the division of powers, policing and the method of delimitation.

An ultimatum claims that one set of negotiators may decide, on its own timetable, whether a constitutional settlement moves forward or collapses. That is a claim to a veto, and nobody in this process holds one. The Apex Body and the KDA are coalitions of organisations. They have earned their seat at the table. They have not been elected to speak for all of Ladakh.

When every round of talks ends in a fresh deadline, and every gain is dismissed as nothing, it is fair to ask what the objection is really about. Is it about Ladakh’s powers, or about who gets to claim them? Is it wise to hold an entire process to ransom while a few leaders wait for terms that suit their own ambitions?

Ordinary Ladakhis are paying for this. Their villages have no elected panchayats. Their young people are waiting for recruitment notices. Five new districts have no councils.

When agitation becomes permanent, it stops being a means to anything and turns into an occupation in itself.

The next round of talks is set for early October. Ladakh is entitled to insist that a draft arrives then, and to say so plainly if it does not. What it cannot afford is to win the argument about speed and lose the thing it was arguing for.

--IANS

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