Eight Councils, One Pen: Why Ladakh's New Hill Councils Show the Limits of Autonomy by Regulation

Autonomy That Can Be Rewritten in Six Days Article 240 of the

Constitution lets the President make regulations for the peace, progress and good government of certain Union Territories. Those regulations can even amend or repeal Acts of Parliament as they apply to the territory. That one provision explains both halves of Ladakh's news: why the hill councils could be expanded so fast and why that speed worries the people they are meant to empower.

What the

regulation does The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils (Amendment) Regulation, 2026 changes the framework set up by the LAHDC Act, 1997:

• More councils. Councils are now provided for in all eight districts, including the newly created Sankoo. Until 2019, Ladakh had only two, for Leh and Kargil.
• Flexible size. The old fixed number of 26 constituencies per council is replaced by a range of seven to 24, suited to smaller districts.
• Wider inclusion. Each council will have four nominated members drawn from women and unrepresented communities. The process was quick. The Union Cabinet approved it on 14 October, the President promulgated it on 16 October and the Lieutenant Governor announced it on 20 October.

The rule as written, the rule as practised On paper, this is decentralisation.

In practice, it shows how thin Ladakh's autonomy really is. The hill councils are statutory bodies. They exist because a law created them and the same law can be changed by an executive regulation without a single local vote.

That is exactly what happened. The objection from the Kargil Democratic Alliance, one of the groups negotiating with the Centre on statehood and Sixth Schedule status, follows from this. Its member Sajjad Kargilli said it was deeply problematic to change the councils' composition, powers and functioning without consulting Ladakh's people while talks were still going on.

The contrast that matters Compare a council under the Sixth Schedule.

The Bodoland Territorial Council in Assam derives its existence from the Constitution itself. Sixth Schedule councils can make laws on subjects such as land and social customs, subject to the Governor's assent. Their structure cannot simply be redrawn by an executive order.

Ladakh's councils, by contrast, have no law-making power. They depend on the UT administration for budgets and on delegated executive functions. So the real question is not how many councils Ladakh has, but where their authority comes from.

Eight bodies whose design can be rewritten by regulation in six days are not a substitute for an elected legislature or a constitutional safeguard. They are administrative decentralisation, granted and alterable from above.

The constitutional silence Article 240 was built for small territories without legislatures, where governing by regulation is practical.

It contains no requirement to consult local people. Applied to a large, politically mobilised region in the middle of negotiations, that silence turns a convenience into a source of mistrust. For GS2, the lesson is the difference between statutory and constitutional autonomy. The first can be expanded quickly. The second is the only kind that cannot be taken away just as quickly.