Exactly eight months ago, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) of both Leh and Kargil had unanimously passed a resolution, demanding “complete autonomy from Kashmir's administrative setup”. Claiming that the Jammu and Kashmir government discriminated against Ladakh in terms of development and treated it as a dumping yard in terms of postings, LAHDC sought a separate division for the Ladakh region instead of being part of the Kashmir region.
With the move to bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir and grant them status of union territory, Ladakh's destiny has been snapped from that of Kashmir. At a glance, there is every reason to believe there will be celebrations all over the desert mountain.
Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, BJP MP from Ladakh who was the chief executive councillor of LAHDC at Leh had gone on record saying successive state governments had neglected the Ladakh region.
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In fact, the LAHDC, which gives the people of Leh and Kargil districts a semblance of autonomy, was formed in 1995 when the Ladakhis were demanding that the Leh district be made union territory of India.
Leh has predominantly Buddhist population, double the number of Muslim population in the region.
Kargil district too got its autonomy under the same LAHDC Act almost eight years later, in 2003. By then the name of the district capital was on every Indian's mind as the venue where India handed out a crushing defeat to Pakistan. Unlike leh, Kargil is a Muslim majority area—there is one Buddhist for every five Muslim.
The people of Kargil , incidentally, had never wanted to be part of a union territory or snap links with Kashmir.
Ladakh's 33-year-old MP Namgyal has, in a tweet, thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for what he called “a historic bill”, and welcomed the J&K Reorganisation of States Bill on behalf of the people of Ladakh. “People there wanted the region to be a union territory. People in Ladakh wanted the region to be free of the dominance of and discrimination by Kashmir” he said.
While a number of people have celebrated their newfound status as a union territory, there are voices that ask for a legislature for the union territory, “which alone will satisfy the aspirations of the people of Lakadh”.
Sonam Wangchuk Shakspo, a former diplomat who was Indian ambassador to Mongolia, said, “What more could we ask for? Truly a bold step.”
