On August 24, three days before Amit Shah announced the creation of five new districts in Ladakh, news emerged of the resuming of protests for the sixth schedule in Leh Ladakh. Besides that momentum was also gathering for a proposed padayatra from Leh-Ladakh to Delhi led by the APEX body representing Ladakh in the absence of any communication from the Union government after the elections to resume the talks.
Earlier this year, three rounds of talks between the home ministry and the high powered committee put together by the Central government to resolve the deadlock with the Ladakh leaders yielded no results. This led to a hunger strike and sit-in protest in Leh and Kargil, led by the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), respectively.
These protests had gathered worldwide coverage due to Sonam Wangchuk’s 21-day ‘Climate Fast’ in Leh. This ultimately resulted in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate losing the MP elections by more than double the vote share. The BJP-led government created Ladakh as a Union Territory in August 2019 by abrogating Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, previously considered tamperproof.
However, to everyone’s surprise on August 26, 2024, at 11:22 am, Home Minister Amit Shah announced the creation of five new districts Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra and Changthang in Ladakh on social media platform X.
As soon as the news broke, celebrations were announced across Ladakh. The people in these regions, who had long demanded district status, were overjoyed, hoping this decision would bring them redemption.
Ladakh had previously suffered from its division into two districts Leh and Kargil, in 1979, largely marked by religious majorities, leading to religious polarisation. This decision hopefully will end this polarisation and usher Ladakh in a new direction.
This announcement of five new districts may buy the home minister some time and dent the APEX and KDA for a short time but it has created a new set of complexities. If this neo-administrative set-up fails to deliver, it further complicates the nuanced grievances of the region.
Ladakh is geo-strategically an ultra-sensitive border of India flanking both China and Pakistan. But limiting the interest of only these two powers in this region is a very conservative way to rather misunderstand Ladakh and its geo-strategic importance.
It is only natural that one assumes our government understands this complexity and hence much planning is involved in every major decision that is taken in this region. One would have assumed that the LG-led administration and the home ministry have already deliberated on this.
However, on the day of the announcement, as feared, All India Radio (AIR) reported at 9:14 pm that the Ministry of Home Affairs had directed the Ladakh Administration to form a committee to assess all aspects related to the formation of five new districts, only after the announcement of the new districts.
An eerie feeling of August 5, 2019, resurges and the administrative anomaly that Ladakh plunged into post that decision comes back to haunt every thinking individual in Ladakh and hopefully the rest of India.
We were all happy to have been freed from a colonised legacy, of Dogra colonisation and a Kashmir-centric state. Sadly since August 2019, the Union government is yet to legally define the people of Ladakh, there is no domicile law in place yet. The people of Ladakh contend that the ‘Constitution (Jammu and Kashmir) Scheduled Tribes Order (Amendment) Bill, 2024‘, passed by the parliament, erroneously included four tribes (Gaddi, Sippi, Gujjar, and Bakarwal) in the Ladakh list, which are not indigenous to Ladakh.
Another major concern is that the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils (LAHDCs) in Leh and Kargil remain the only potent representative democratic institutions in Ladakh, one for each district. However, with the increase to seven districts, several questions emerge such as will the acts of these institutions be amended to include the new districts? How will the new districts remain attached to the same institution, based on what factors? The pressing question is, will these institutions be further compromised, further weakening even the ambiguous powers that remain with them?
Establishing seven districts, including five new ones carved out of the existing two, with complete administrative machinery — starting from a collector and an SP/SSP — in areas with an average population of just 20,000 to 25,000 individuals per district, will inevitably lead to red tape, excessive policing, and increased state presence in people’s lives.
Moreover, since 2019, without a Public Service Commission (PSC) in Ladakh, no state cadre gazetted recruitments have taken place in the Union Territory, while being barred from appearing in the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission (JKPSC) recruitments as well.
Without exhaustive planning, maintaining administration in seven districts with one of the lowest population densities in the world will only lead to excessive bureaucratisation. Following the transition to a Union Territory, excessive bureaucratisation is already a major cause of discontent in Ladakh.
Despite the announcement of new districts, core problems and demands persist in Ladakh:
- Full statehood for Ladakh (Hill Councils powerless in Union Territory administration)
- Inclusion in the Sixth Schedule (Ladakh has 97 % tribal population).
- Establishment of a PSC in Ladakh (no gazetted recruitments since 2019).
- Two MPs for Ladakh. (As a Union Territory, the entire region has been reduced to 1MP, from 1 MP, four MLAs, MLCs, and the speaker of the J&K Legislative Council under erstwhile J&K state).
The grievances of the people in these regions could have been better addressed through genuine engagement and time-bound resolutions, even if it meant creating new districts. Until these issues are addressed, populist announcements and stop-gap measures will only exacerbate the problems in Ladakh. The government must recognise that the demand for districts was a means to alleviate suffering, not an end in itself. If this announcement fails to address their problems, it will worsen the existing debacle. Material development and governance are not interchangeable with democratic rights.
Ladakh, with its distinct history and identity, deserves its distinct existence in the Union of States that is India. To resolve the current impasse, the government must engage with all stakeholders in Ladakh and arrive at a just and agreeable arrangement; otherwise, the alienation of the people of Ladakh will only intensify. Let’s congratulate the people in these new districts and hope their trust will not meet the same fate as Ladakh’s.
Mutasif Hussain is the Chief Coordinator, Ladakh Research Scholars Forum.