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Friday, Jan 04, 2008
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Ladakh front to go it alone

Staff Reporter

Jammu: The Ladakh Union Territory Front has decided to contest on its own in the strategic Leh area in the 2008 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections. Talking to reporters here, Thupstan Chewang, MP and LUTF Leader, said the front would not have any electoral tie-up with the present ruling alliance as it “violated” the principle of democratic decentralisation.

One of the two LUTF legislators elected in 2002, Nawang Rigzin Jora, joined the Congress-led coalition and is a Cabinet minister. However, the other, Pintoo Narboo, did not support the coalition. In the October 2005 elections to the Leh Autonomous Hill Development Council, the LUTF won 25 seats, leaving just one to the Congress.

The council was formed by an ordinance issued by the Congress government at the Centre in the mid-1990s for devolving powers to the district.

But things have been far from resolved in Ladakh, which area-wise is more than double the size of the rest of the State. The bureaucracy and the democratically elected council have been on warpath, asserting their supremacy over the affairs of the region.

The council has fewer powers than elected district boards in the rest of the country under the Panchayat Raj system. Hence genuine decentralisation could not be achieved.

A delegation of the council, which recently met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, alleged that the Leh Senior Superintendent of Police was harassing innocent people. Recently, the police thrashed one of the elected representatives of the area, it said.

The council complained that the State government was interfering in its functioning, resulting in hurdles to development.

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