Dialogue, not agitation, holds key to Ladakh’s political future

Why in the News

A new constitutional arrangement has been offered to Ladakh under Article 371, with a directly elected Union Territory level body holding legislative, executive and financial powers. The offer follows a political protest in Leh a year ago that turned violent, in which four young people were killed in police action and dozens more, including police personnel, were injured. A judicial inquiry into that episode was ordered. Negotiations between Ladakh’s representatives and the Centre now turn on a single demand, a democratic structure that protects land, jobs, culture and a fragile environment. The contested point is whether commitments reached through negotiation are undervalued precisely because they were not won through confrontation.

What is the constitutional arrangement offered to Ladakh?

1. Basis in Article 371: Article 371 and the articles that follow it carry special provisions for particular States and regions. The arrangement offered to Ladakh is to be built under that head.
2. An elected legislative tier: A directly elected body at the Union Territory level is to hold legislative, executive and financial powers.
3. Safeguards for land and culture: The model is to carry constitutional and legal safeguards for land and for culture.
4. Without precedent: The arrangement is described as sui generis, meaning of its own kind, tailored to Ladakh’s circumstances rather than modelled on an existing State or council.

Where do Ladakh’s political demands come from?

1. A separate polity: Ladakh was once its own kingdom, sitting astride the Silk Route.
2. Loss of sovereignty: Its sovereignty ended in 1834, when Dogra forces overran the region. Ladakh was then subsumed into the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
3. Governed from Srinagar: After 1947 Ladakh’s Buddhist and Shia communities found themselves governed from Srinagar, in a political system centred largely on the Kashmir Valley.
4. The movement for direct rule: A political movement took birth in response, demanding direct rule from Delhi.
5. The 2019 concession: The central government carved Ladakh out as a Union Territory in 2019. It was a significant concession, and it did not settle every grievance.

Who lives in Ladakh, and why does its composition shape the demand?

1. A plural population: Buddhists of Tibetan descent, Muslim communities including Baltis, Sunnis, Shias and Noorbakhshis, and Christian, Hindu and Sikh minorities live across the region.
2. Scale and location: The population is spread across 60,000 sq km, in the borderlands between Pakistan and China.
3. Administrative fulcrums: Leh and Kargil have been the two centres of administration, which is what made a single representative tier contested.

What is being offered on local representation and jobs?

1. Five new districts: Five new districts have been created in response to demands for more decentralised governance. Each is slated to get an elected Hill Development Council.
2. Panchayat elections: Preparations are underway for panchayat elections. The stated goal is a genuine devolution of administrative and political power.
3. Job reservation: Ladakh already has 95 per cent reservation of local positions for residents, including educationally backward classes and economically weaker sections.
4. Recruitment so far: Nearly 5,000 young people have been given government employment, and thousands more are set to be recruited.
5. Dedicated local services: Ladakh administrative and police services have been mooted, so that core administrative posts are held by local youth.

What does the development record show?

1. Road and border connectivity: Roads now reach valleys that were once a full day’s hard travel away. Sustained investment in border infrastructure has transformed connectivity.
2. The Zojila tunnel: The 13 km Zojila tunnel is nearing completion. The world’s longest high altitude single tube tunnel will end Ladakh’s winter isolation.
3. Air connectivity: Nearly 20 flights land in Leh daily each summer. A new airport terminal and a second airstrip at Nubra are in the works.
4. Telecom and power: Telecom connectivity is expanding under the Bharat Net programme. The power grid is reaching remote villages this year, sparing families the annual migration to the plains.
5. Water and climate response: Nearly every rural household has piped water under the Jal Jeevan Mission. New reservoirs, called Him Sarovars, are being built to store meltwater as glaciers retreat.
6. The rural farm economy: Support is focused on the pashmina, apricot and dairy sectors, with floriculture and sea buckthorn cultivation getting special attention. Tourism is booming.

Why does agitation not settle the question?

1. Reading last year’s violence: Treating that violence as a failure of the political process misstates what the political process has produced. Dialogue and engagement with Ladakh’s leadership continued through the year that followed.
2. The pace of negotiation: Consensus building is slow and painstaking, and needs strong foundations of trust and a spirit of accommodation. Patience earns no headlines.
3. What confrontation cannot design: Negotiated commitments take time to design properly, and are easy to undervalue for that reason alone.
4. The comparative claim: The Centre has moved further and faster on Ladakh’s behalf in six years than in the preceding seven decades.
5. The reciprocal ask: Ladakh’s own leadership is asked to extend the same patience it is asking Delhi to show.

Challenges to the proposed Ladakh arrangement

1. An offer short of the stated demand: The arrangement is offered under Article 371 rather than through the Sixth Schedule status and statehood that Ladakh’s representative bodies have pressed for. Eg. The Kargil Democratic Alliance and the Leh Apex Body rejected an earlier Union proposal for a territorial council.
   The Fix: Publish the draft text of the arrangement, so its safeguards can be compared with the Sixth Schedule provision by provision.
2. A Union Territory legislature holds the powers a central law gives it: An elected body in a Union Territory exercises delegated authority, and the Lieutenant Governor retains control over reserved subjects. Eg. The division of powers between the elected government and the administrator has repeatedly reached the courts in Delhi and in Puducherry.
   The Fix: Enumerate the legislative subjects, the financial powers and the Lieutenant Governor’s discretion in the statute itself rather than in executive rules.
3. Land and job safeguards need a domicile rule to operate: A reservation for residents and a restriction on land transfer both depend on a legal definition of who counts as a resident. Eg. Jammu and Kashmir’s domicile rules were framed separately after the 2019 reorganisation.
   The Fix: Notify a domicile rule alongside the arrangement, so the land and employment safeguards have a defined class of beneficiaries.
4. Councils without assured funds remain administrative shells: An elected council that depends on discretionary grants exercises far less power than its mandate suggests. Eg. Autonomous District Councils under the Sixth Schedule hold taxing powers and still rely heavily on state grants.
   The Fix: Tie a fixed share of the Union Territory budget to each council through a statutory transfer formula.
5. Ecological limits bind whatever the political settlement: Glacier retreat, water scarcity and visitor pressure constrain the region regardless of who governs it. Eg. Leh draws heavily on groundwater during the summer season, in a cold desert with very low precipitation.
   The Fix: Fix a carrying capacity for tourism and make the arrangement’s environmental safeguard enforceable through a named statutory authority.

Conclusion

Ladakh’s question is not whether the region gets institutions but whether those institutions carry powers that cannot be withdrawn administratively. An arrangement designed for one region alone has the advantage of fitting its circumstances and the weakness of resting on the Centre’s continuing goodwill. The two positions still unreconciled are a demand pitched at constitutional entrenchment and an offer pitched at tailored accommodation. The markers to watch are the panchayat elections and the first council polls in the newly created districts, since those will show whether power is being handed down or held back.

What is Asymmetric Federalism?

1. About: Asymmetric federalism is an arrangement in which the constituent units of a federation hold different powers and protections rather than an identical set.
2. Rationale: It accommodates regions whose history, demography or geography make uniform treatment a source of alienation, and has been described as self rule within shared rule.
3. Constitutional forms: Articles 371A to 371J carry special provisions for named States, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules provide for self governance in tribal regions, and Article 370 provided a special status for Jammu and Kashmir until its revocation in 2019.
4. Fiscal dimension: Centrally sponsored schemes carry a 90 per cent central share for special category States, against 60 per cent for others.

Back2Basics: Hill Development Council

1. What it is: A Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council is an elected district level body exercising devolved powers over local subjects such as land use, village development and local works.
2. Legal basis: It is constituted under the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils Act, 1995, enacted by the Jammu and Kashmir legislature and continued after the 2019 reorganisation.
3. The two existing councils: The council for Leh was constituted in 1995 and the council for Kargil in 2003.
4. Composition and term: Each council has 30 members, 26 directly elected and 4 nominated, and a term of five years.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2013, GS2, 10 marks] Recent directives from Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas are perceived by the `Nagas’ as a threat to override the exceptional status enjoyed by the State. Discuss in light of Article 371A of the Indian Constitution.”