Cold Promises: The Uncertainty Of Ladakh Statehood

Shahid Hassan, 70, a farmer, drove seven hours from his village in Kargil to Srinagar for an eye surgery. Unable to afford a hotel or a rest room, he had to stay in a room that was a part of a mosque complex known as Imam Bargah on a narrow street in Dalgate. The room was cramped with Hassan’s luggage that the family had to carry for the rather long stay. The mosque led to a street that opened to a bustling wide road across which boats rowed on Dal Lake.

Hassan rested his back against the stained wall of the room where three other people, including his daughter, stayed. They had been living in the cramped space for over two weeks, waiting for Hassan’s eye to heal post-surgery. Then, it would be another seven-hour drive back home.

“We had to spend over Rs 50,000 for the surgery at a private hospital. If we had a decent eye facility in Ladakh, we could have saved the money on travel. Even for basic health check-ups, people have to travel all the way,” says Hassan, as his daughter puts drops in his eye.

Hassan and others like him were hoping that their socio-economic situation would change after August 5, 2019—following the abrogation of Article 370 that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir—when the Muslim majority Kargil became a part of the Union Territory of Ladakh, along with the Buddhist-dominated Leh.

While the lack of basic facilities and widespread unemployment continue to make the lives of people difficult, over the past five years, locals have been fighting for issues that define their identity and that of their region.

On June 2 and 3, the Centre notified a series of regulations for Ladakh’s land, jobs, and cultural preservation, aimed at addressing concerns raised by civil society in Ladakh. The new legal framework introduces a domicile-based job reservation system, recognition of local languages, and procedural clarity in civil service recruitment.

By reserving government jobs—95 per cent—for domiciles and elaborate restrictions on who can be a domicile of Ladakh, the Centre has sought to address the persistent demands from locals. But residents and local leaders feel this is just a quick-fix bureaucratic solution to their long list of problems. Their primary demands—inclusion in the Sixth Schedule and statehood—have not been considered yet.

The Sixth Schedule Factor

For the past five years, residents, activists and local leaders have been demanding that Ladakh be included in the Sixth Schedule, which provides tribal-majority areas in certain northeastern states with legislative and financial autonomy through autonomous district councils. The demand is grounded in the fact that more than 90 per cent of Ladakh’s population belongs to Scheduled Tribes.

The demand has been consistently voiced by the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), which jointly represent the Buddhist and Muslim communities in the region. In 2024 and 2025, the movement gained national visibility after engineer, innovator and climate activist Sonam Wangchuk led a hunger strike.

The most critical omission in the latest regulations announced by the Centre is the absence of any restriction on land ownership by non-domiciles. This is a key issue in Ladakh, given concerns over large-scale tourism, infrastructure projects and climate vulnerability.

“People from outside can buy land in Ladakh if a Ladakhi wants to sell it. That is the reason why we are seeking safeguards under the Sixth Schedule. It will help protect our land and culture and will prohibit non-tribals from buying tribal land,” says Chering Dorjay, the co-chairman of the Leh Apex Body, which has been fighting to protect the jobs and land rights of the local people.

“Although Article 371 helps protect land rights too, we are seeking the Sixth Schedule as it will protect our laws related to customs too. It will also help in the constitution of the elected district autonomous bodies which will have the power to frame laws on land use and cultural issues,” adds Dorjay.

While the Centre has restricted domicile rights to only those who have resided in Ladakh for 15 years, non-locals can become eligible after 2034—15 years after the abrogation of Article 370. “After 2034, 95 per cent of jobs would be reserved for locals and the other five per cent for non-locals. We are seeking that the time limit for non-locals who don’t have resident certificates to become eligible for domicile should be 30 years. The government has constituted a high-power committee and we also had a meeting with the Home Minister. It will, however, take some time,” informs Dorjay.

Ladakh’s long fight for inclusion in the Sixth Schedule also saw residents joining the protests. Gelek Phunchok, a travel agent, says under the Sixth Schedule, the region would have an Autonomous Regional Council and District Councils with elected representatives who would be empowered to frame laws to protect the local population. “Ladakh is a fragile region with limited resources. It is a cold desert region and we are already facing a shortage of water. If people from outside settle here in large numbers, our water table will deplete,” says Phunchok. “If Ladakh is opened to outsiders, there will be a serious change in the demographic character of the region,” says Ghulam Mohammad, a Kargil resident.

No Jobs: A Major Challenge

Unemployment is a major issue in Ladakh. As per government data, Ladakh registered the sharpest increase in the number of unemployed graduates in the country from 2021-22 to 2022-23, a jump of over 16 per cent in a year. The residents have been desperate for jobs for long, and hence they have welcomed the 95 per cent reservation for locals under the new policy.

“Highly educated youth are sitting idle. There are very few avenues of employment in Ladakh, hence we strongly believe outsiders should not get any jobs here,” says Mohammad.

“We are also seeking that Ladakh should have a separate cadre to employ people in gazetted services like the Kashmir Administrative Service. Recruitments have not happened in the gazetted cadre since it became a separate UT,” says Dorje.

Demand For Statehood

The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council Bill was passed in Parliament on May 8, 1995. The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh (LAHDC, Leh) and the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Kargil (LAHDC, Kargil) work with village panchayats to take decisions on economic development, healthcare, education, land use, taxation, and local governance.

However, with the abrogation of Article 370, all the privileges that Ladakh had were lost. The existing councils do not have legislative powers, says Tsering Angchuk, LAHDC councillor. This has reduced the people of Ladakh to powerless subjects with just one Member of Parliament.

Since Ladakh is without an Assembly, it was being directly ruled by the Centre and governance was controlled by bureaucrats rather than elected officials. “We are seeking statehood so that power transfers from the bureaucracy to the hands of elected people. We should have complete control over making laws, particularly with regard to protecting land and job rights. Once we have a state, we would be able to frame our own laws,” says Ladakh MP Haji Haneefa.

Residents, on the other hand, are demanding statehood for the sake of development. “Statehood will ensure that several areas which are lagging behind on the developmental front and lack proper infrastructure in the education and health sectors are not neglected,” says Mohammad.

The Ladakh MP cited the 2011 Census that put the total population of the region at 2.7 lakh—Kargil with a population of over 1.4 lakh and Leh with 1.3 lakh. Hence, protecting the demographic character of the area becomes pertinent. “We have a very small population. The settlement of a few thousand people alone will change the demographic character of the area. We are seeking cultural and constitutional safeguards to protect our identity,” says Haneefa.

Through statehood and the Sixth Schedule, political leaders are hoping to undo the current arrangement of “dual” control where the local elected hill council remains in a tussle for power with the Ladakh Lieutenant Governor, Brigadier (retired) B.D. Mishra. Local political leaders are opposed to dual control over the administration, with the elected members of LAHDC Leh and the LG’s office remaining in a constant tussle for power.

Lundup Dorjai, a councillor of LAHDC Leh, says that their developmental funds under the capex budget have been reduced for this year. “Our budget is being cleared by the Ministry of Home Affairs and for this year, there is a decline in the budget. We already have several bills of contractors pending. With this arrangement, development in the region will suffer badly. We want that the locally elected hill council should have more powers on the developmental front, more control over our budget, which is not the case. We shouldn’t be run by bureaucrats,” he says.

According to Dorjay, apart from the other demands, they have also sought an increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats in Ladakh from one to two.

Ishfaq Naseem is senior special correspondent, Outlook. He is based in Srinagar

This article appeared as Cold Promises in Outlook’s July 21 issue Degrees of Separation, a special education issue where our reporters and columnists delved into the the business of education and its stakeholders—students, universities and education consultants.