Ladakh - Government and Politics

Government and Politics

Ladakh district was a district of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India until 1 July 1979 when it was divided into Leh district and Kargil district. Each of these districts is governed by a Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, which is based on the pattern of the Darjeeling Gorkha Autonomous Hill Council. These councils were created as a compromise solution to the demands of Ladakhi people to make Leh a union territory.

In October 1993, the Indian government and the State government agreed to grant each district of Ladakh the status of Autonomous Hill Council. This agreement was given effect by the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council Act, 1995. The council came into being with the holding of elections in Leh District on 28 August 1995. The inaugural meeting of the council was held at Leh on 3 September 1995. Kargil followed Leh's footsteps in July 2003, when the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council — Kargil was established. The council works with village panchayats to take decisions on economic development, healthcare, education, land use, taxation, and local governance which are further reviewed at the block headquarters in the presence of the chief executive councilor and executive councilors. The government of Jammu and Kashmir looks after law and order, the judicial system, communications and the higher education in the region.

Ladakh sends one member (MP) to the lower house of the Indian parliament the Lok Sabha. The MP from Ladakh in the current Lok Sabha is Hassan Khan an Independent.

Although on the whole there has been religious harmony in Ladakh, religion has tended to be politicized in the last few decades. As early as 1931, Kashmiri neo-Buddhists founded the Kashmir Raj Bodhi Mahasabha that led to some sense of separateness from the Muslims. The bifurcation of the region into Muslim majority Kargil district and Buddhist majority Leh district in 1979 again brought the communal question to the fore. The Buddhists in Ladakh accused the overwhelmingly Muslim state government of continued apathy, corruption and a bias in favour of Muslims. On these grounds, they demanded union territory status for Ladakh. In 1989, there were violent riots between Buddhists and Muslims, provoking the Ladakh Buddhist Association to call for a social and economic boycott of Muslims which went on for three years before being lifted in 1992. The Ladakh Union Territory Front (LUTF), which controls the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council — Leh demands union territory status for Ladakh. A consortium of political parties formed in 2002 decided that a regional party should be formed under a single flag and carry on with the struggle for this status.

Things changed when a few of the nominated candidates shifted sides and joined national and Kashmiri parties. Since then the political scene in Ladakh has been uncertain. While the LUTF demands union territory status for just the Leh district, the general consensus among the people in Kargil and Ladakh is that these districts be included in the demand. This Party lost prestige after it indulged in narrow-minded politics that led to the suspension of prestigious educational movements like the Operation New Hope, implemented jointly by the Students' Educational & Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL).