Ladakh groups take Sixth Schedule demand back to Home Ministry as a Kargil-to-Leh march looms

Representatives of the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance went back into talks with the Union Home Ministry's high-powered committee in New Delhi on Wednesday afternoon. The meeting was listed for about 4 p.m. Delegates had flown in on Tuesday. Sajjad Kargili of the KDA said the groups would again push for Sixth Schedule status to protect land, culture, jobs, ecology and identity. A Kargil-to-Leh foot march is scheduled to start on 10 September and run to the 24th. The calendar was not an accident.

Ladakh became a Union Territory in 2019 when Jammu and Kashmir was split. Since then the two civil-society blocs have asked for statehood, constitutional safeguards on the Sixth Schedule model used in parts of the Northeast, job reservation and separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil. The population of the UT is about 3.5 lakh. The demand is that a small, high-altitude society should not have its land and jobs opened by rules written for a much larger Indian market.

The last substantial round, on 22 May, produced a government phrase: a "customised sui generis model" built by adding provisions to Article 371. The ministry called full statehood a long-term aspiration and offered a UT-level elected body with executive, financial and legislative powers. On 19 August in Leh the groups handed over a list they described as non-negotiable. That list asked for a directly elected assembly headed by a chief minister and council of ministers, with powers drawn from the arrangements used in Nagaland, Sikkim and Mizoram. The August meeting ended without a signed framework.

Ahead of Wednesday the Lieutenant-Governor's administration rolled out confidence measures. A bench of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh is to sit in the UT. The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils (Nautor Regularisation) Rules, 2026, were approved so that genuine nautor holders can get proprietary title. Hill councils are to be set up in all seven districts, including the five new ones. Each council is proposed at 30 members. Seven councils would mean 210 elected seats in a territory of 350,000 people. That is dense local representation. It is not a legislature with a chief minister.

The groups also want police cases from last September's street protests dropped, and compensation for four civilians killed and others injured in those protests. Those items sit outside the constitutional design and inside the politics of the room. Chief Secretary Ashish Kundra has described the 9 September date as part of a process to deepen democratic practice. The ministry's letter framed it as a sub-committee meeting. The groups framed it as the last stop before they walk the highway.

The structural disagreement is simple to state. Delhi is willing to thicken the UT with councils, a court bench and a custom 371 clause. Leh and Kargil want the word state, the office of chief minister, and Sixth Schedule control over land and jobs. Article 371 can be written to look like some of that. It is still a Union Territory clause. The Sixth Schedule creates autonomous districts with a different legal spine. The two texts are not interchangeable, which is why the May phrase did not close the file.

Wednesday's session will be judged by whether any sentence on paper moves from "custom model" to a draft bill, and whether the march that starts on Thursday goes ahead as a victory lap or as a second pressure campaign. For a territory that sits on the China boundary and on a thin civilian population, the argument is about who writes the land law. That is why the meeting is in the Home Ministry and not in a development ministry.