Prominent leaders from Ladakh region of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir held a protest in Jammu on Sunday as part of a campaign to press for their four demands.
The protest demonstration was jointly organised outside the Press Club Jammu by the powerful Leh-based Apex body of peoples movement for the 6th schedule and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA).
They also announced a protest calendar which includes a rally in Delhi in the third week of Febru-ary.
“We have decided to stay away from the high-powered committee constituted recently by the min-istry of home affairs as the government ignored our four-point agenda and also paid no heed to our sug-gestion about the composition of the panel,” former MP and chairman Apex body Thupstan Chhewang told reporters.
Flanked by his deputy Tsering Dorjey Lakruk, KDA co-chairpersons Qamar Ali Akhoon and Asgar Ali Karbalai besides other senior leaders affiliated with different non-BJP parties, he said they are not against the dialogue with the government on the issues concerning the people of Ladakh.
“Given the attitude of this government, we have decided to intensify our agitation and today’s pro-gramme was part of it. We will move to Jantar Man-tar, Delhi in the third week of February and will follow it up by village, block and district level pro-tests across the UT of Ladakh. We will go for strikes if our demands are not met,” he said.
Both the apex body and KDA, which is a sepa-rate amalgamation of socioreligious, political and youth organisations of Leh and Kargil districts, were formed after the Modi regime’s August 5, 2019 actions when New Delhi illegally abrogated the special status of J&K and bifurcated it into J-K and Ladakh territories.—KMS
