Leh (Ladakh): Gun slung across shoulder, Raj Tilak, a paramilitary trooper, scurried down a tiny hill with a tiffin case in hand to collect his afternoon meal from a police van halted on Choglamsar Road in Leh.Behind Tilak, the heavily guarded office of the Bhartiya Janta Party resembles a site under military siege. The scars of the violence of September 24 are fresh; most windows of the three-storey building are shattered, and streaks of black soot cover the pale walls of its front entryway.Once a sought-after address and a power centre of politics, the office looks haunted now. A couple of saffron flags flutter gently in a breeze. These have returned to the building after it was torched by protesters, but there is no sign of any civilian life on the premises.“No one is inside,” said Tilak on Tuesday (September 30), hastening back to the building after taking his food, “We are the only ones here”.Mood in Leh’s main market after relaxation of curfew. Photo: The WireCouncillors ‘afraid to leave home’A week after a peaceful protest for constitutional safeguards and democratic rights in Leh culminated in a frenzy of death and destruction, the saffron party finds itself in an existential quagmire.Even though 15 out of 26 councillors in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Leh) – the LAHDC – belong to the party, at least six of them told The Wire that they were avoiding stepping out of their houses due to the simmering anger against the party which is facing the heat because of the police action against protesters.One BJP councillor said that he had “nothing to do with the party”. “I am not a politician. I contested the election for the BJP with the hope that (prime minister) Narendra Modi and (Union home minister) Amit Shah would work for Ladakh’s betterment. But what’s happened is a historic blunder,” he said. He also said that the climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, incarcerated in Jodhpur jail now, was to blame for the crisis.Local anger reflected the fear of the councillors.“They (BJP leaders) won’t be able to show their faces in public,” said Jigmet who had come for a haircut at a salon in Leh market after curfew was relaxed on Tuesday and gave only his first name fearing reprisal from officials, “People of Ladakh will not forget what happened on September 24”.A paramilitary trooper stands guard outside the BJP office in Leh. Photo: The WireFive years, five fasts, brewing discontentThe BJP won the 2020 LAHDC polls after the Modi-Shah combine had delivered a year earlier on making Ladakh a Union territory, a longstanding popular demand in Leh region which was first made by 19th Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, a Buddhist lama who also also served as India’s ambassador to Mongolia.In its 2020 council election manifesto, the saffron party also promised to provide safeguards to Ladakh under Sixth Schedule of the Constitution to protect its land, jobs and environment.Ladakh’s tourism sector, valued at Rs 600 crore in 2020, is the major driver of economy contributing around 60% to Ladakh’s GDP along with animal husbandry and agriculture sectors.Nearly five years since BJP’s promise and with the new council election on the anvil, the promise of the Sixth Schedule is far from being fulfilled. Yet, the Union government has embarked on ambitious, multi-crore rupee projects in the railway and power sectors which have made Ladakhis suspect that the region’s land, resources and its very way of life was facing a threat.A second BJP councillor, wishing anonymity, explained: “The problem started growing roots in the last five years and during the five fasts of Sonam Wangchuk. It was brewing all along while the central dispensation failed to offer an alternative model to win the trust of Ladakhis”.Last year, the saffron party’s Ladakh unit became a divided house after it gave mandate to the incumbent chief executive councillor (CEC) of LAHDC Tashi Gyalson for the Lok Sabha polls, pushing Jamyang Tsering Namgyal who was elected on BJP mandate in the 2019 parliamentary polls and his loyalists to the margins.File: Ladakh MP Jamyang Tsering Namgyal waiting for his turn to vote in the council election. Photo: X/@Ashoke_RajIn a WhatsApp message, Gyalson said that he was in the national capital but didn’t respond to repeated phone calls and requests for interview. The induction of Tashi Gyalson Khachu as the state BJP president of Ladakh earlier this year aggravated the crisis further.The failure to deliver on the Sixth Schedule promise eroded the BJP’s political legitimacy in Ladakh over the last five years while internal divisions pushed it on a weak wicket. Now, the September 24 violence has made it an outcast in Ladakh.‘Can’t even build a road’“Our families are fearing for our lives. The party office and council office will be built again but how will we bring back those who lost their lives,” said the BJP councillor quoted above who said he has moved out of Leh since the September 24 violence, “We have lost innocent lives. It should not have happened”.The councillors who spoke with The Wire also sounded unhappy with the loss of their powers after Ladakh was demoted into a Union territory in 2019 which they said left them at the mercy of bureaucrats appointed directly by the lieutenant governor, himself an appointee of the BJP-led central dispensation.“I have to make multiple phone calls to officers to resolve petty local issues,” said another BJP councillor, who won the election on the BJP mandate but sounded uncomfortable about his affiliation with the saffron party.He added: “I can’t even build a road in my constituency. The councils are a powerless entity. We raised this with our party. We were also hopeful that the talks (between the MHA and Ladakhi leaders) would end this problem”.The Union government engaged the Ladakhi leaders in 2023 through the high powered committee to look into their four main demands of constitutional safeguards and restoring the democratic rights of its people, but there has been no forward movement in talks.LAB co-chairman Chering Dorjay Lakrook ahead of a press conference in Leh on September 29. Photo: The Wire“The government didn’t even discuss our demands,” Chering Dorjay Lakrook, co-chairman of Leh Apex Body who has participated in talks with the Centre told The Wire, demanding that the administration drops the cases and releases all the suspects arrested for the September 24 violence.With the LAHDC elections set to be held later this year and aware of the simmering anger on the ground, some party councillors have written half-hearted letters to lieutenant governor Kavinder Gupta seeking “fair investigation” into the September 24 violence, though they avoid coming out in public.“Nothing can be said right now,” the BJP councillor quoted above said, “Even a sensible decision could go wrong. Our families are concerned. They have forced many of us to stay out of this”.Khachu, the party’s Ladakh president told The Wire that he held a meeting with party workers on Tuesday, while sticking to the party’s position that the protesters were incited by Wangchuk, “Everyone is in panic. Four innocents have been killed while those who incited them have gone into hiding”, he said.