LEH (The Thursday Times) — The Leh Apex Body was due to begin a hunger strike in Leh on Saturday against the timing of Ladakh’s hill council elections, after turning down back-channel overtures from the Centre that included an offer of fresh talks in December.
Chering Dorje Lakruk, who leads the body, said he had received calls from the Union Home Ministry, the first such contact since a meeting between Ladakh’s leaders and ministry officials in Leh on October 18.
The ministry said it would arrange a meeting of the High Powered Committee on Ladakh between December 5 and 10, and would speed up the report of the judicial commission investigating the violence in Leh on September 24, 2025, in which four people were killed, according to sources.
On the leaders’ main demand, the postponement of the hill council elections due on December 4, Lakruk was told that the schedule had been notified through a presidential order and that any change would take time, the sources said. He told the ministry that the protest would go ahead.
“We feel that they (the administration) want to rig the elections by getting their own people elected… so that they can later say they are real representatives and we will talk with them,” Lakruk said.
The body’s sit-in in Leh entered its second day on Friday, and its leaders said the hunger strike would be led by religious heads. Leaders of the Kargil Democratic Alliance, including its co-chairman Sajjad Kargili, arrived in Leh on Friday evening and said they would join the protest at NDS Memorial Park on Saturday.
Wangchuk contests curbs
The activist Sonam Wangchuk, a member of the Leh Apex Body, has written to Home Minister Amit Shah and Ladakh’s Lieutenant Governor, Vinai Kumar Saxena, contesting a 60-day order that bars him from organising or joining unauthorised rallies and gatherings. He says about 20 armed police officers posted around his home have in effect confined him there.
“The imposition of the Model Code of Conduct, as recorded in the order, cannot, by itself, be invoked as a blanket justification to curtail this right or to impose restrictions that effectively confine me to my residence, in the absence of any intervening reason,” he wrote.
Ladakh’s police chief has said Wangchuk was “advised to stay at his residence in view of the prohibitory orders” issued by the region’s chief electoral officer and Leh’s district magistrate. In a video message, Wangchuk said police stopped him when he tried to step out to establish whether he was under house arrest.
Winter polls
Chief Secretary Ashish Kundra has called the polls a “watershed moment” for democracy in the Union Territory, saying winter weather should not stop people from voting and pointing out that schools in the region stay open until December 15.
Leaders opposed to the timing say that holding a vote in December, when temperatures can fall below minus 30C and many residents move to the plains, will keep people from taking part. Ladakh votes in panchayat and municipal elections on November 21, followed by polls to its eight hill development councils on December 4.
