Gilgit Agency

The Gilgit Agency (Urdu: گلگت ایجنسی‎), created in 1877 and overseen by a political agent of the Governor-General of British India, was a political unit of India, which managed the relations of the British with the princely states of Hunza and Nagar.

In 1935, the Gilgit Agency leased the northern half of the Princely state of Jammu and Kashmir from the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, for a period of sixty years, and administered it.

The seat of the Agent was at Srinagar. The British lease of territory and the Gilgit Agency were abandoned by the British when Pakistan and India became independent countries in 1947. However, following the independence in 1947 and the First Kashmir War, the name "Gilgit Agency" was adopted by Pakistan to refer to the Northern part of Kashmir, but the name ceased to be used when the area was merged into the Northern Areas of Pakistan in 1970. Within Pakistan, the later "Gilgit Agency" was supervised directly from Islamabad, separately from the neighbouring state of Azad Kashmir and the princely states of Hunza and Nagar. It also did not include the district of Kargil and the subdivision of Ladakh which had been a part of the British Gilgit Agency. The Pakistani Agency bordered the Sinkiang region of China to the northeast, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to the south, Baltistan to east, and the North-West Frontier Province to the west.

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