The Union government has recently conducted the next round of a sustained process to fulfil the aspirations of the people of the Union Territory of Ladakh. On September 9, a sub-committee of the Union Home Ministry met representatives from Ladakh in New Delhi, including the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance.
The decisions taken at this meeting will ensure a UT-level elected body for Ladakh. This body will have sufficient legislative, executive and financial powers. Its members will be chosen through direct elections from constituencies rather than indirectly through the hill councils.
Under a special provision of Article 371, constitutional protection has also been accepted for land, culture, heritage, the environment and natural
resources.
However, on September 10, an ultimatum was issued by some leaders from Ladakh. The government has been given one week to provide an assurance that it will pursue the Sixth Schedule instead of Article 371. If the government does not accept these demands, a protest march will be organised from September 19 to 24, with a wider agitation to follow.
That is not a negotiating position. It is an attempt to force a veto over a constitutional process that concerns all of Ladakh. While those opposing the outcome of these talks claimed that the September 9 meeting produced nothing new, many others who participated in the discussions have a different view.
Thupstan Chhewang, a former Member of Parliament who led the Leh Apex Body until last year, called the talks fruitful and questioned the need for a fresh agitation when dialogue was producing results.
Following the September 9 talks, Ladakh’s Member of Parliament, Mohmad Haneefa Jan, said the Home Ministry was serious about establishing the legislative framework and providing safeguards under Article 371. He also stressed the urgency of restarting recruitment for young people who have been waiting for years to appear for examinations.
A Record of Concrete Gains
The earlier rounds of talks have already been productive and have produced substantial outcomes. The Union government has ensured that 85 per cent of government posts in the UT of Ladakh are reserved for locals, with 80 per cent of these reserved for Scheduled Tribes. A domicile framework has also been put in place, five official languages have been notified, and one-third of hill council seats have been reserved for women.
However, those opposing the outcome of these meetings and threatening agitation have demanded that the entire process be halted until their demand to bring Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule is implemented.
The fact of the matter is that the demand for applying the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution instead of Article 371 may not serve Ladakh’s interests.
The Real Constitutional Question
The nature of the dispute in Ladakh has changed quietly. For the past six years, the central question was whether the region would have an elected legislature at all. That issue has now been resolved. The remaining disagreement concerns which constitutional mechanism should provide that legislature and how much time should be allowed for drafting it. This is a much narrower question than the broader public debate suggests, and it should be examined on its own merits.
India has developed two different constitutional mechanisms for its tribal and frontier regions. The Sixth Schedule, introduced in 1950, was designed for tribal districts within states. It provides autonomous district councils with powers over land, forests, village administration, inheritance and customary practices. For three generations, this framework has operated in the hill districts of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
A second mechanism emerged later and addressed a different need. The Article 371 provisions began with Nagaland in 1962 and were subsequently extended to Sikkim in 1975 and Mizoram in 1986. Unlike the Sixth Schedule, these provisions do not establish a sub-state council. Instead, they place specific protections for particular communities directly within the Constitution, with provisions tailored to the circumstances of each territory.
Over several decades, the Constitution evolved towards recognising that frontier societies may require customised arrangements rather than a uniform model.
Ladakh is now being offered the latter model, while those opposing it are seeking the earlier one. This raises a fundamental question: which arrangement would serve Ladakh’s interests in the best possible way? The answer to this question is linked closely to another question: which provision would be more difficult for a future government to withdraw or dilute? The answer is clearly Article 371.
The Provision Rarely Discussed
The reason that makes Article 371 a better option for Ladakh can be found in a provision that receives little attention in the public debate.
Paragraph 21 of the Sixth Schedule allows Parliament to amend the Schedule through ordinary legislation and specifically states that such an amendment will not be considered a constitutional amendment.
This means that a future Parliament, acting with a simple majority, could potentially alter Ladakh’s protections without having to meet the two-thirds threshold required under Article 368. An arrangement created under Article 371 does not provide the same opening. Changes to it require a constitutional amendment.
The Nagaland and Mizoram models go further by requiring the concerned elected legislature to pass its own resolution before certain categories of central legislation can become applicable in the state.
There is another important limitation to the Sixth Schedule demand. It does not establish a legislature in the conventional sense. Instead, it creates district councils.
Ladakh already has such councils—one in Leh, established in 1995, and another in Kargil, established in 2003. Even if the Sixth Schedule were extended to Ladakh tomorrow, the region would still not have a legislative assembly, a council of ministers, or territorial legislative powers.
The real gap in Ladakh’s governance is therefore not at the district level. It is the absence of the institutional tier above it. That is precisely the level that would be addressed by the proposed arrangement by the Union Home Ministry. The attempts to derail this arrangement would ultimately affect Ladakh’s own interests.
The writer is an author and columnist. His X handle is @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed are personal and solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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