New Delhi: On September 9, climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and 14 other Ladakhis kickstarted a 35-day fast onto death for statehood for Ladakh, and the implementation of the Sixth Schedule. At Leh, where the fast began, Wangchuk said that they had initiated the latest fast after talks with the Union government on these demands fell through.The people of Ladakh – backed also by regional parties like the Leh Apex Body – have been repeatedly asking the Union government to confer statehood on the union territory. They have also been demanding that the Sixth Schedule be implemented in the region, arguing that these changes would give local communities a bigger stake in the governance of Ladakh as well as protecting its natural and cultural wealth. For instance, Ladakhis have raised concerns about the allocation of huge pasturelands in the Changthang (vast, open tracts of the highest grazing lands in the world) used by local indigenous communities, to corporates for projects such as a solar park.Ladakhis have been consistently undertaking fasts, marches and protests in attempts to get the Union government to engage with them and implement these demands – but to no avail. In September last year Wangchuk and almost 100 others marched from Leh to the national capital to submit their demands in person to officials including the union home minister Amit Shah.“Last year, in the same month, we had started a march from Ladakh to Delhi to raise our concerns – 20 days, 100 people, 1000 kilometres,” Wangchuk said on a social media post on September 9. “At Delhi, we were welcomed in jails. But we still sat on a fast for 16 days. After this, the government agreed to speak with us.”However only three of such talks occurred over the past year. And there have been no talks at all for the past three months, Wangchuk said.It is important to go on fasts now because in October, the next round of elections for the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council will take place.“This is an important election,” Wangchuk said. Last time when these elections occurred in 2020, the BJP – which won the elections that time – had made a “huge promise” to Ladakh including the promise that they would implement the Sixth Schedule – but that did not happen, he said.However the people of Ladakh will not let the government fall back on its promises, Wangchuk said.This cannot happen in the largest democracy in the world, but democracy has now become a joke in India with vote chori (theft) and other issues, Wangchuk said. Wangchuk was referring to the allegations regarding vote manipulation during the 2024 Lol Sabha elections in several states and constituencies that the Congress has highlighted in recent times.“There was dilly dallying tactics on Statehood and Sixth Schedule. There is an attempt to bury the real issues,” The Hindu quoted Wangchuk as saying.According to The Hindu, Wangchuk also criticised the union government for sending him a CBI notice, an income tax summons and withdrawing land meant for the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives Ladakh (HIAL). “These are all pressure tactics,” The Hindu quoted him as saying. As per Wangchuk, this has stemmed from his voicing of concerns about government sanctions giving away lands that rightfully belong to the herders of Ladakh’s Changthang area.