Ladakh groups return to Delhi on 9 September still asking for the Sixth Schedule

Members of the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance arrived in New Delhi on 8 September for talks with the Union Home Ministry's High-Powered Committee, listed for about 4 p.m. on 9 September. Sajjad Kargili of the KDA said the groups would again press for Sixth Schedule cover to protect land, culture, jobs, ecology and identity. LAB convener Gelek Phunchok said the focus was the two pending demands and a draft that, in the Ladakh reading, was already agreed in May and signed on 3 July.

Ladakh became a Union Territory in 2019 when the former state of Jammu and Kashmir was split. Since then the two civil-society blocs have asked for statehood and for Sixth Schedule status, the constitutional device used in parts of the Northeast to give elected councils power over land and custom. The Centre has called statehood a long-term aspiration. On 22 May it spoke of a "customised sui generis model" built by adding provisions to Article 371, plus a UT-level elected body with executive, financial and legislative powers.

That is not what LAB and KDA say they will accept as a final map. After an 19 August meeting in Leh they tabled what they called non-negotiable demands: a directly elected Assembly with a Chief Minister and Council of Ministers, clear legislative and executive powers, and safeguards drawn from the arrangements used in Nagaland, Sikkim and Mizoram. Chief Secretary Ashish Kundra has described the 9 September sitting as part of a dialogue to deepen democratic processes. He confirmed the date on 3 September.

Around the table the administration has stacked confidence-building measures. President Droupadi Murmu has notified a High Court bench that can sit in Ladakh. The Lieutenant Governor's administration approved the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils (Nautor Regularisation) Rules, 2026, which give proprietary rights to genuine Nautor landholders. Hill councils have been announced for all seven districts, including five new ones. None of those steps is Sixth Schedule. All of them are meant to show movement before the next street test.

The street test is already dated. The KDA has backed a Kargil-to-Leh foot march from 10 to 24 September for statehood and Sixth Schedule. The Delhi meeting therefore sits one day before a mobilisation that will walk the same road the groups have walked since 2019. LAB and KDA also want police cases from the September 2025 protests dropped, and compensation for four civilians killed and others injured. Phunchok said the case-withdrawal demand was recorded in the minutes of the 22 May sub-committee meeting and signed by MHA, LAB and KDA on 3 July.

September 2025 is the scar the talks cannot ignore. Dead civilians and open FIRs make every offer of an Article 371 clause look, to the marchers, like a substitute for the two words they have not dropped: statehood and Sixth Schedule. The Centre's file says those words are not available on the present timetable. The 9 September meeting is where that disagreement will be restated, with a march already printed on the calendar behind it.

Readers who follow Ladakh already know the slogans. The new facts this week are the arrival list in Delhi, the 4 p.m. slot, the signed May-July minute on cases, the High Court bench and Nautor rules as the government's exhibits, and a 15-day padyatra that begins 24 hours after the meeting ends.