GILGIT-BALTISTAN

1. Context 

2. Gilgit-Baltistan

• Gilgit-Baltistan or G-B is the northernmost territory administered by Pakistan, providing the country's only territorial frontier and thus a land route, with China where it meets the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
• To G-B's West is Afghanistan, to its  South of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and to the east, the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
• As far as India is concerned, G-B is Indian territory, part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir that acceded to India in full after Independence and which has been under illegal Pakistani occupation.

Image Source: News Bharati

3. History of this region

3.1 Operation Gulmarg

• On October 22, 1947, with Hari Singh dithering on accession to India, Pashtun tribal militiamen along with Pakistani forces poured into the Kashmir Valley and marched towards Srinagar by a plan known as Operation Gulmarg.
  On the way, the lashkars engaged in massive plunder and looting in Baramulla.
• Seeing the writing on the wall, Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession with India on October 26, 1947.
• The Indian Army then landed in the Kashmir Valley and began an operation to push back the Pakistani invaders.

3.2 What was happening in Gilgit?

• In Gilgit meanwhile, a rebellion had broken out against Hari Singh.
• On November 1, a local political outfit called the Revolutionary Council of Gilgit-Baltistan proclaimed the independent state of Gilgit-Baltistan.

3.3 Frontier Crimes Regulation

3.4 Gilgit Scouts

• The British had raised a small force called the Gilgit Scouts in the region.
• Its job was to guard Gilgit, ostensibly on behalf of the Maharaja, but its real purpose was to help the British administer the Gilgit Agency, which lay on the frontier of what was then the Soviet-British Great Game territory.
• In August 1947, after the British returned Gilgit to Hari Singh, the Maharaja sent his representative,  Brigadier Ghansar Singh, as Governor of Gilgit.
• But the Gilgit Scouts, who were led by a British Major named Willam Alexander Brown, rose in rebellion.

3.5 Provisional government

• Following the India-Pakistan ceasefire of January 1, 1949, Pakistan in April of that year agreed with the "Provisional government" of the so-called "Azad Jammu & Kashmir" parts that had been occupied by Pakistani troops and irregulars to take over its defence and foreign affairs.
• Under this agreement, the so-called "AJK" government also ceded the administration of Gilgit-Baltistan to Pakistan.

4. Current status

• Though Pakistan, like India, links G-B's fate to that of Kashmir, its administrative arrangements are different from those in PoK.
• While PoK has its own Constitution that sets out its powers and their limits vis-a-vis Pakistan, G-B has been ruled mostly by executive fiat.
• Until 2009, the region was simply called Northern Areas.

4.1 Northern Areas Legislative Council (NALC)

• It got its present name only with the Gilgit-Baltistan (Empowerment and SelfGovernance) Order, 2009, which replaced the Northern Areas Legislative Council (NALC) with the Legislative Assembly.
• The NALC was an elected body but had no more than an advisory role to the Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas, who ruled from Islamabad.
• The Legislative Assembly is only a slight improvement. 
• It has 24 directly elected members and nine nominated ones.

4.2 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

• In 2018, the then PML (N) government passed an order centralising even the limited powers granted to the Assembly, a move linked to the need for greater control over land and other resources for the infrastructure projects then being planned under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
• The order was challenged and in 2019, the Pakistan Supreme Court repealed it and asked the Imran Khan government to replace it with governance reforms.
• This was not done. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court extended its jurisdiction to G-B and made arrangements for a caretaker government until the next Legislative Assembly elections.
• The last polls were held in July 2015 and the Assembly's five-term ended in July 2020.
• Fresh elections could not be held because of the pandemic.

4.3 Provisional provincial status

• On November 1, 2020, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that his government would give the region "provisional provincial status".
• That has not yet happened if and when that happens, G-B will become the fifth province of Pakistan.

5. India's views on these developments

• India's position has been clear and consistent that the entire former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir belongs to India.
• India has objected to the plan to make G-B a province of Pakistan and has asserted on several occasions in the recent past that it would take control of G-B.

• Government monitors all developments taking place in the territories of India including territories that are under the illegal and forcible occupation of Pakistan.

6. The People in G-B want

• The people of G-B have been demanding for years that it be made a part of Pakistan so that they get the same constitutional rights that Pakistanis have.
• These people are physically and culturally far removed from India and have very little connection with India.
• Some have in the past demanded a merger with PoK, but the people of G-B have no real connection with Kashmir either.
• They belong to several non-Kashmiri ethnicities and speak various languages, none of these Kashmiri.

• A majority of the estimated 1.5 million G-B residents are Shias. 
• There is anger against Pakistan for unleashing extremist sectarian militant groups that target Shias and for dictating the use of their natural resources, but the predominant sentiment is that all this will improve once they are part of the Pakistani federation.
• There is a small independence movement, but it has very little traction.