People visiting a market in Leh on Wednesday. (ANI Photo)
LEH/NEW DELHI: Unlike every other summer when the bazaars are teeming with tourists, this season, due to the coronavirus pandemic, life in Leh, is placid. Yet as the sharp sun shines on the rugged mountains of the high-altitude desert of Ladakh, natives step out wearing masks and hope. Reason — Ladakh is happy with its union territory status.
On August 5 last year, the central government carved out two union territories — Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir (J&aK), out of the state of J&K.
The union territory of Ladakh had been a long pending demand of the Ladakhi people. The agitation for the demand had begun under Ladakh’s greatest leader Kushok Bakula, 65 years ago and later carried forward by another Ladakhi leader Thupstan Chhewang. Both represented Ladakh in Indian Parliament.
“None of us had ever imagined that the demand would be met in our lifetime. In six decades no Prime Minister could do it when Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, in his second tenure, made the announcement, we could not believe our ears,” Tashi Norbu, a cab driver in Leh said.
Even as tourism “the sector on whic