ON JULY 16, the Leh Autonomous Hill Development – Subordinate Services Recruitment Board, advertised for 534 jobs across various departments of the Union Territory of Ladakh’s administration.
According to Rehmatullah Butt, Deputy Director, District Employment and Counselling Centre, Leh, about 50,000 applications were received for the 534 vacancies advertised in July. “The exam is likely to be held in the first or second week of November,” he told The Indian Express.
Ladakh is the largest Union Territory, but the second least populous after Lakshadweep. It is estimated to have a population of about 3,00,000. This means one in every six Ladakhi has applied for the 534 jobs in the Subordinate Services.
Over the last two months, Thupstan Tsewang, a member of the advocacy group Ladakh Research Scholars Forum, helped candidates from the region fill the form in the Leh Autonomous Hill Development Subordinate Services Recruitment Board Portal.
Tsewang claimed that the advertisement for 534 non-gazetted jobs saw 60,000 applicants. The job distress has fuelled anger among the youth. To apply for the jobs, some people even flew to Chandigarh and back, spending as much as Rs 20,000 just to fill the “confusing form”, he said.
According to Tsewang, given the timing of the job advertisement — just months before the elections for the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council expected in October 2025 — has left many suspect if the recruitment will indeed materialise, or whether it was just aimed at garnering support before the polls.
Pointing out that jobs have dried up for the youth of Ladakh after 2019, Tsewang recalls a similar advertisement for filling up 797 non-gazetted posts issued by the SSC in 2022. At that time, the number of applicants was 30,000 – or one-tenth of the population of Ladakh.
Before 2019 (when Jammu and Kashmir was split into two UTs — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh), Ladakhis could compete with tribals from J&K for bureaucratic posts advertised by the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission under the Scheduled Tribes quota. “About 5-6 Ladakhis would get employed each year in each individual service in the PSC examination, adding up to an impressive cumulative number.
However, once Ladakh was separated from Jammu and Kashmir and became a Union Territory, the umbilical cord with J&K, and with the Jammu and Kashmir PSC, got snapped, as government jobs in J&K are now open only for domicile residents of the Union Territory.
Data furnished by the Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Rameshwar Teli in Rajya Sabha on December 14, 2023, in response to questions on state-wise figures of unemployment among graduates, show that in 2021-22, 9.8% of graduates in Ladakh aged 15 or above were unemployed, but this number jumped to 26.5% in 2022-23. The national average was 14.9% in 2021-22, and 13.4% in 2022-23.
Thus, Ladakh, where graduate unemployment was about 5 percentage points below the national average in 2021-22, saw a 16-percentage point rise in one year to have an unemployment rate that was now double the national average.
In Ladakh, young people aspire for government jobs, said Akriti Kanodia, a lawyer who earlier taught at the Druk Padma Karpo school there. She told The Indian Express that government jobs were the mainstay in Ladakh, with the few private jobs coming largely from tourism– running home-stays, lending motorcycles to tourists, or related to adventure sports.
Tsewang said for gazetted jobs, a Ladakh Public Service Commission should be set up. Till then, the government could have let Ladakhis apply for jobs with the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission. “We could then compete for those jobs like earlier,” he said.
But instead, the government offered jobs under a three-year or so contract. “In contractual jobs, people don’t get the basic salary of the post,” he said.
In June 2025, the Centre notified a series of regulations aimed at addressing Ladakh’s concerns over jobs, quotas and cultural preservation. The new legal framework introduces a domicile-based job reservation system, recognition of local languages, and procedural clarity in civil service recruitment. As per the new regulations, a person has to be a resident of Ladakh for 15 years to get a domicile certificate and be eligible for jobs, while the ceiling on total quota has been lifted to 85%, excluding reservation for EWS. Since Ladakh is 90% tribal, it would virtually give reservation to all Ladakhis.
Ladakh, where graduate unemployment was about 5 percentage points below the national average in 2021-22, saw a 16-percentage point rise in one year to have an unemployment rate that was now double the national average. 
Share
