Ladakh leaders reject Delhi's governance draft

The Kargil Democratic Alliance has rejected the Union government's draft governance framework for Ladakh, saying the document hands overriding authority to the lieutenant governor and the bureaucracy while leaving the proposed elected body with little legislative, executive or financial power. The home ministry presented the draft on October 15; a week before Saturday's rejection, a subcommittee of the alliance and its partner in the statehood agitation, the Apex Body Leh, met ministry officials to discuss greater democratic representation. Talks between the two sides have stalled, with each blaming the other for the lack of progress.

The disagreement turns on which article of the constitution the new structure sits under. Minutes of a May 22 meeting, signed by ministry officials and Ladakhi leaders on July 6, recorded statehood as the territory's ultimate aspiration and sketched a "sui generis" structure with legislative, executive and financial powers — strong enough, in co-convener Asgar Karbalai's account, to bring the bureaucracy, including the chief secretary, under the control of the elected body. Constitutional safeguards were to be modelled on Articles 371 (A-J), which give certain states protections over land, customary practices and administration, customised as Article 371-K for Ladakh. The October draft instead places the governance structure under Article 240, which allows the President to make regulations for certain Union territories. Co-convener Sajjad Kargili called the document "an attack on the rights of the people of this region" and said Ladakh had been turned into a testing lab from which representation had been stolen.

Ladakh has been administered from Delhi since August 2019, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government abrogated Jammu and Kashmir's special status under Article 370 and split the state into two Union territories. Unlike Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh was given no legislature. By 2022 the territory's leaders had fixed on four demands: statehood, constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule for tribal areas, separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil, and a separate recruitment process and public service commission. All of Ladakh currently elects a single member to the Lok Sabha.

The alliance has warned of protests and shutdowns if the ministry does not implement what its officials signed in July. The last time the statehood demand reached the streets, on September 24, 2025, police firing killed four people and injured 50.