The polls for the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Kargil (LAHDC-K) in the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh have been slated for September 10 but the legal wrangle between the Ladakh administration and the National Conference (NC) seems far from over.
The LAHDC-K polls will be the first such elections in Kargil since Ladakh was carved out as a Union Territory, without an Assembly, from Jammu and Kashmir in 2019.
Candidates have to file their nominations by August 16. The date for withdrawing nominations has been set as August 26.
The administration of the Union Territory and the National Conference were in a legal battle over the party symbol. The administration had refused to grant the symbol of a ‘plough’ to the NC on the grounds that the election authority of Ladakh was not a Commission and had no such powers. However, the J&K and Ladakh High Court on August 10, 2023 allowed the NC candidates in the UT to retain the symbol. However, the Ladakh administration filed an appeal against the same.
“The J&K and Ladakh High Court has dismissed a fresh appeal filed by the Ladakh administration against granting of the symbol to the NC by the Single Bench. The same election authority granted the Aam Aadmi Party its symbol (in 2020) for the LAHDC-Leh polls. In the case of the NC, the Ladakh administration has a problem. Candidates from a recognised party can only contest on its symbol. There is no such case where the symbol is reserved anywhere else. There are no reasons for opposing the NC to use ‘plough’ as its symbol,” Shariq Reyaz, lawyer of the NC, told The Hindu.
The election authority of Ladakh has not notified the symbol to the NC so far, official sources said.
An official said that Ladakh, after becoming a UT, has not recognised or identified any party as a State party and no symbol has been reserved for any party. According to Rules 17 and 18 of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Election) Rules, 1995, symbols are reserved only for political parties recognized by the Election Commission as a national and a State party.
During the 2018 polls, the NC had won 10 seats and emerged as the single largest party in the LAHDC-K. It was followed by the Indian National Congress (INC) that won eight seats. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won two seats and the BJP just one. Five other seats were bagged by Independents.
The hill council has powers to monitor development projects and chalk out work plans at the grassroots. Set up in 2003, the hill council, with a mandate to address local issues of governance, has 30 seats. Twenty-six councillors are elected from the respective constituencies and four councillors nominated from the principal minority community and women. Kargil, a hilly district spread over 14,086 square kilometres, has a total population of 1.19 lakh, according to the 2001 census.
