Centre ready to fulfil Ladakh's aspirations, asks for 'patience'

SRINAGAR: Ladakh groups need to be patient with the Centre as an in-principle agreement to have a legislative body under Article 371 still requires a constitutional amendment with a two-thirds consensus in Parliament, chief secretary Ashish Kundra said Thursday of rising expectations after talks with Leh Apex Body (LAB) and Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA) in Delhi the previous day.“There was a discussion on whether there would be direct or indirect elections through the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils. Representatives of LAB and KDA said elections should be direct and a consensus was reached on this issue,” Kundra said at a presser in Leh.

“The question that remains to be answered concerns the relationship between the LAHDCs and the UT-level body. What powers will be vested on LAHDCs and what will be the jurisdiction of the UT-level body?”The chief secretary said the Centre handed the Ladakh groups a list of eight to 10 questions to which they did not have immediate answers.

“They were requested to think about those, consult the public and tell us what they think, so that we can move towards a draft by taking these issues forward at the next meeting in Oct,” he said.Kundra said the proposed arrangement wasn’t as straightforward as the “enactment of an ordinary law”. He requested the Ladakhi leadership to acknowledge that the parliamentary process might take time.The chief secretary said the Centre did not want to impose any administrative model that wasn’t acceptable to the people. “We want to move forward only after discussion with everyone. When in good faith and in the interest of everyone, everything is moving forward, it is the responsibility of the leadership here to create an environment of positivity among people, to give them hope that things are moving forward.”