Hattee samiti submits another representation for ST status
Proposal has been reject thrice
The office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI), in a communique to the samiti in January, had stated that as per the extant modalities, the proposal had been examined thrice since 1995. It was not supported by the ORGI in 2006 or in 2017. Since the third proposal sent in 2018 was based on the same ethnographic study report sent by the state government in 2016, which was examined by the office in 2017, it can’t be examined again.
Ambika Sharma
Tribune News Service
Solan, February 24
With the office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI) rejecting the claim of the state government to declare the Hattee community of the trans-Giri area of Sirmaur a schedule tribe (ST), the Kendriya Hattee Samiti (KHS) submitted a fresh representation to the state government to press for its demand.
The ORGI, in a communique to the samiti in January, had stated that as per the extant modalities, the proposal had been examined thrice since 1995. It was not supported by the ORGI in 2006 or in 2017. Since the third proposal sent in 2018 was based on the same ethnographic study report sent by the state government in 2016, which was examined by the ORGI in 2017, it can’t be examined again.
The ORGI also pointed out that the proposal did not have a recommendation of the department concerned, hence it couldn’t be examined.
This has come as a big blow to the community, as the state government had been pursuing the case since 2016. The tran-Giri area was part of the erstwhile Jaunsar Bawar area of Uttarakhand, where the Hatti community has been granted the ST status. Both areas were part of the royal Sirmaur state. Only Kinnaur enjoys the ST status in Himachal. Since granting tribal status to an area requires a constitutional amendment, the issue required an in-depth analysis of the community, which is spread across 133 panchayats.
The KHS has submitted a fresh representation to the state government over the non-implementation of the Tribal Commission recommendations of 1979-80 for granting the ST status to the Hattee community.
Dr Ami Chand Kamal, president of the KHS, pointed out that the information provided in the ethnographic study was sufficient and the officials had not gone through the study conducted by the Director General Anthropological Survey of India, 1996; Anthropology Department of Panjab University, 2018; and Institute of Tribal Studies,1996. The report of the SC/ST commission of 1979 also supported the demand, he claimed.
Kamal said people residing in the trans-Giri area should be given the STs status on the basis of their likeness to those living in the Jaunsar Bawar area of Uttarakhand. Hattee community leaders cite various reports in support of their claim and rue that Sirmaur has been discriminated against by successive governments in violation of Article 342(2) of the Constitution.
The committee has urged the government to look into the matter.
