Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk ended his indefinite fast on Monday after the Union Ministry of Home Affairs assured him that talks would be resumed with representatives from Ladakh in December on a set of demands to protect the Union territory under constitutional provisions.
Wangchuk began his fast on October 6 at the Ladakh Bhawan in Delhi after he and other activists were denied permission to hold a demonstration at Jantar Mantar on their demands.
The group had been demanding statehood for Ladakh, its inclusion under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, job reservation for locals and two Lok Sabha and one Rajya Sabha seats for the region.
The Sixth Schedule under Article 244 (Administration of Scheduled Areas and Tribal Areas) of the Constitution guarantees certain protections for land and a nominal autonomy for citizens in designated tribal areas. In Ladakh, more than 97% of the population belongs to the Scheduled Tribes.
On Monday, Prashant Lokhande, joint secretary of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, met Wangchuk and handed him a letter from the home ministry.
The letter said that the committee of the ministry that had been holding talks with representatives from Ladakh would hold its next meeting on December 3, PTI reported. The representatives include members from the civil society groups Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance.
“On the 16th day of our fast, I am happy to say that our main appeal has been resolved,” Wangchuk said after meeting Lokhande. “The talks will be carried out by these bodies [the two civil society groups] and I hope that very good outcomes will come, not just for Ladakh but for the whole nation.”
On October 6, Wangchuk told reporters that they had been forced to start their strike at the Ladakh Bhawan after failing to find another venue in the national capital. On social media, he said that the police had denied them the permission to hold it at “the officially designated place for protests”.
The Delhi Police said that they had received the request at short notice and the organisers had not specified the duration of the planned protest.
A day earlier, Wangchuk claimed that when the activists ended their previous fast at the Rajghat in Delhi on October 2, they had been assured of an appointment with the “top leadership of the country within two days”.
However, the activists had to resume their fast after this was denied, he said.
On October 2, Wangchuk said that he had given a memorandum to the Union government with a set of demands to protect Ladakh under constitutional provisions and seeking to resume talks within 15 days to address the residents’ immediate concerns.
Wangchuk made the statement shortly after he and 150 other protestors from the Union territory were released by the Delhi Police and allowed to visit Rajghat, the memorial for Mahatma Gandhi.
The group had been detained at Delhi’s Singhu border on the night of September 30 while marching to the national capital to demand constitutional safeguards for Ladakh. On October 1, they launched an indefinite fast at the police stations where they have been held. They had ended this fast on the next day.
On August 5, 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government rescinded the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
This, along with the lack of a legislature in Ladakh, has led to increasing insecurities among the residents of the Union territory about their land, nature, resources and livelihoods and stoked fears that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem may be in jeopardy.
Wangchuk had also undertaken a 21-day hunger strike ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in March demanding statehood for Ladakh and the protection of the Himalayan ecology.
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