Bharat C Thakur

UT Ladakh Administration: A spectacle of bureaucratic dishonesty and incompetence! The @Ladakh administration has the audacity to tell the High Court and the national media that HIAL failed to execute its land lease. Really? Then perhaps they should first read their own letters before making a public spectacle of themselves. We applied for the lease on 20 May 2018, barely 15 days after the land was allotted. We wrote again in March 2020. They themselves replied that the lease could not be executed because the administration had not finalised its lease policy. In February 2021, they repeated the same explanation, admitted that the delay affected other institutions too, and explicitly permitted us to continue construction. We wrote again in July 2023. Four dates. Written correspondence. Official signatures and stamps. Their own admissions. And now they have the gall to make it appear that HIAL was responsible for the delay! What kind of administration creates the obstacle, sits on it for years, and then blames the institution that has been pleading with it to remove that very obstacle? This is abysmal governance. A bureaucratic absurdity elevated to an art form. And what makes it worse is the spectacle of these allegations being circulated through the national media while the matter is sub judice. Is the purpose to assist the Court in establishing the truth, or to destroy an institution's reputation before the facts have even been examined? Ladakh needs statesmen. Instead, we seem to have acquired petty shopkeepers of power, keeping accounts of imagined offences while remaining conveniently oblivious to their own failures. The tragedy is that these are the very people entrusted with nurturing institutions, encouraging innovation and building Ladakh's future. HIAL has spent years trying to build an educational institution that addresses the real challenges of the Himalayas. Instead of enabling such work, the administration appears determined to bury it beneath paperwork, contradictions and public accusations. And then they have the temerity to lecture us about compliance! You cannot fail to put a lease policy in place, repeatedly acknowledge that failure in writing, and then pretend that the institution waiting for your policy is the culprit. That is not accountability. It is an attempt to turn administrative failure into someone else's wrongdoing. The documents are attached. They speak far more eloquently than any press briefing. Before maligning HIAL, the Ladakh administration should answer one question: Why did you repeatedly tell us the lease could not be executed because YOUR policy was not ready? Stop insulting the intelligence of the people of Ladakh. We deserve competent governance, not manufactured narratives. #HIAL #Ladakh #Accountability #RuleOfLaw