On 26 September 2025, Ladakhi educator and climate activist Sonam Wangchuk was detained under the National Security Act (NSA) after protests in Leh over statehood and constitutional safeguards turned deadly, leaving four people dead and dozens injured. The curfew, internet cuts, and the cancellation of his NGO’s FCRA licence framed the state’s message; Wangchuk’s circle calls the detention a punishment for non-violent mobilising. He was moved to Jodhpur Central Jail even as solidarity protests spread beyond Ladakh. 

What people are really demanding

The Ladakh agitation is not a single-issue outburst but a four-point charter pushed jointly by the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA): (1) full statehood, (2) inclusion under the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule, (3) a Ladakh Public Service Commission to ring-fence jobs for locals, and (4) fairer parliamentary representation (a separate LS seat for Leh and Kargil). The demand is essentially about who decides land-use, jobs, and cultural policy in one of the world’s most fragile ecologies. After the 2019 reorganisation separated Ladakh from J&K as a Union Territory without a legislature, authority concentrated in an unelected UT administration,fuel for a slow-burn grievance that flared on September 24. 

Sixth Schedule, in plain language

The Sixth Schedule (Article 244(2)) creates powerful Autonomous District/Regional Councils with law-making, executive and limited judicial powers over land, forests, customary law, and local taxation,today limited to parts of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura. For Ladakh,where a very large share of residents are Scheduled Tribes,the case is that only constitutionalised local authority can protect community land, livelihoods and culture from speculative real estate and extractive projects. Importantly, extending Sixth Schedule beyond the Northeast, and to a Union Territory, would need constitutional change; you can’t just issue a UT regulation and call it a day. 

Why the Centre is dragging its feet

There isn’t one official white paper spelling out “No, because…”. But across statements, committee mandates, and security briefings you can read the contours of New Delhi’s caution.

1) The China factor. Ladakh is a live border theatre. Even after de-escalation steps, the Defence Ministry repeatedly describes the LAC as “stable but sensitive.” Delhi’s security bureaucracy tends to prefer tight central control,especially on land, policing, and infrastructure corridors,in areas where a border incident can rapidly become a national crisis. Granting statehood, or hard-to-override Sixth Schedule councils, is viewed as complicating unified command and logistics on a frontier where minutes matter. 

2) Strategic governance and “fragility.” Security analysts argue that a sparsely populated, geographically vast and ecologically delicate state could be vulnerable,both to external manipulation and to governance gaps that larger states can absorb. That argument (you may disagree with it) says: keep the UT model, strengthen hill councils, and retain New Delhi’s override for security and cross-Himalayan infrastructure. 

3) Legal architecture. The Sixth Schedule’s text is written for specified tribal areas in four Northeastern states. To repurpose it for a Union Territory like Ladakh would require constitutional/legislative surgery and a political consensus neither the government nor the opposition has assembled yet. That isn’t an insurmountable barrier,but it is a deliberate choice with ripple effects and precedents nationwide. 

4) The “use what we have” approach. The Home Ministry points to incremental steps instead: more reservations for STs, women’s reservation in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils (LAHDCs), recruitment drives, and language protections, arguing that the HPC (high-powered committee) talks have “yielded good results.” Protest leaders call these partials “administrative sandbags” that don’t solve the constitutional flood. 

Put simply, Delhi’s internal balance of risks currently prioritises border-management certainty over deep devolution. Whether that is wise statesmanship or an overcorrection is the debate.

But didn’t the BJP promise Sixth Schedule?

Yes,at more than one level. In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election for the Ladakh seat, BJP leaders in the region campaigned on Sixth Schedule safeguards; the party then repeated the pledge in its 2020 LAHDC-Leh manifesto. Even this year, senior voices inside the BJP have been quoted warning that deferring a clear decision has political and moral costs. That promise-reality gap is a big reason the current anger cuts across Leh and Kargil. 

Wangchuk’s place in the movement

For two years Wangchuk has been the movement’s public conscience, with winter fasts, glacier-classroom teach-ins, and an insistence on non-violence. His argument is civilisational rather than sentimental: if you misgovern Ladakh, the harm travels downstream,literally. The ice that ladders these valleys is water storage for millions on the plains; “development” without local consent can collapse both ecology and economy. Whatever one thinks of specific tactics or speeches, the substance,decentralised consent over land and livelihoods in a high-risk climate zone,deserved a table, not a cell.

If not Sixth Schedule/statehood now, what is the credible middle path?

Even if you accept Delhi’s security premise, there’s a workable bridge between “status quo UT” and “full statehood + Sixth Schedule.”

• Constitution-grade safeguards without the exact Sixth Schedule template. Parliament can write Ladakh-specific protections into the LAHDC Act or a new Ladakh Organic Law that (a) constitutionalises local veto/consent over land-use, major mineral leases, and industrial corridors; (b) creates a Ladakh Public Service Commission with domicile-based quotas; and (c) entrenches cultural/linguistic protections,while reserving narrow, reviewable carve-outs for exigent border infrastructure. This is the spirit of Sixth Schedule, tailored to UT status. (Security-first critics get predictability; Ladakh gets rights with teeth.)
  
• Time-bound political roadmap. If statehood is a later step, say it honestly and publicly: define objective triggers (institutional capacity, fiscal benchmarks, security stabilisation metrics) and a review date. Vagueness is petrol on Ladakh’s distrust.
  
• Independent environmental regulation with local anchors. A Ladakh Ecological Authority staffed by local scientists and traditional leaders, with statutory authority to clear,or block,projects based on carrying-capacity science, would align development with glacier reality.
  
• Transparent talks. Publish minutes and option papers from the HPC process. Sunlight is the antidote to rumour in a place drowning in it.
  

The politics of memory and forgetting

There’s a moral layer beyond law and security. Ladakhis remember promises,both the BJP’s pre-poll words and the Government of India’s own constitutional body, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), which in 2019 formally recommended putting Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule. They also see the LAC headlines and accept that security is not a debating-club abstraction. The ask, then, is not reckless autonomy but consent with clarity: rules that last beyond an officer’s tenure and protect a people and a permafrost. The longer New Delhi hedges, the more it risks turning a loyal frontier into a resentful one. 

A humane verdict

A slightly Wangchuk-tilted, intellectually honest reading is this: the arrest wasn’t only about a speech; it was about an unresolved constitutional choice. Preventive detention can still a night; it cannot settle a future. Delhi plainly has legitimate security concerns on a live border. But it also has the constitutional imagination to design Ladakh-specific guarantees that marry ecology, dignity, and national interest. Until it does, the glaciers will keep shrinking, the jobs will keep feeling out of reach, and Wangchuk’s empty cot will sit like an accusation in a very cold jail.