The topography of Ladakh, which became a Union Territory (UT) in 2019 after Jammu & Kashmir was split into two UTs, is as complex as Mars. Equally complex and baffling is the region’s politics. Layered in multiple religious, cultural and linguistic identities spread through a sparsely distributed population and comprising the Buddhist-majority Leh and Muslim-majority Kargil districts.
The recent elections to one of the twin hill councils of Leh and Kargil, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Kargil (LAHDC-K), only brought to the fore a political barcode that needs closer scrutiny for clarity.
It’s important to understand the scale and demography of Ladakh before we decipher the politics of this cold mountain region, which was part of the Kashmir division of Jammu and Kashmir till 2019, when the Centre ended J&K’s special status and carved up the State. In size, Ladakh is around forty times the size of Delhi, which is 1,483 square kilometres, against Ladakh’s area of 59,000 sq km. The population of Ladakh is 2.74 lakh (2011 census), which is far less than the population of Delhi’s south tehsil, where 27.3 lakh people live. Distances between villages in Ladakh could easily vary from 20 km to 80 km.
