Who are Hattees, Himachal asks Delhi, months after the community is added to ST list

Confusion in Himachal Pradesh Tribal Development Dept. over who the Hattees are & whether SCs should be included. The State govt. has written to the Tribal Affairs Ministry in Delhi seeking clarification. BJP had pushed for inclusion of Hattees in ST list before State polls. SCs & Gujjars oppose move.

Months after the Hattee community of Himachal Pradesh’s Trans-Giri area was included in the Scheduled Tribes list of the State, there is confusion in the Tribal Development Department about who the “Hattees” actually are and whether people already classified as Scheduled Castes should be included as members of this community. 

The Tribal Development Department has now written to the Tribal Affairs Ministry in Delhi, seeking clarification on this point. It noted that while the Bill introduced in Parliament excluded Scheduled Castes, the entry added to the ST list just says “Hattee of Trans-Giri area of Sirmour District”. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government had last year pushed hard for the inclusion of the Hattees in the ST list, announcing the decision months before the State went to the polls. The Congress, however, came to power in the State. Of the five seats in Sirmour district, the BJP had lost three. The Presidential assent for the addition was granted in August. 

In a letter sent to Delhi last month, the State government has said that the matter regarding who the Hattees are was referred to the State Advisory Department (Law Department). The department had suggested that the entry added to the ST list does not specifically exclude the communities already notified as SC and hence the amendment must be construed accordingly.

But it also noted that in the Bill to add the community, the statement of objects and reasons specifically said that the intent was to include Hattees, excluding communities that had already been designated as SC. A senior official in the Himachal Pradesh government told The Hindu that the confusion was over how to interpret the entry that has recently been added to the State’s ST list. 

According to past observations of the Office of the Registrar-General of India, people who are referred to as Hattees in the region also include those from communities like Koli, Badhai, Lohar, Dhaki, Dom, Chamar, etc. which are already designated as SCs. 

Last year, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda had estimated that about 1.6 lakh people in Sirmour would benefit from Hattees being added to the ST list. The district’s population is around 5 lakh, as per the 2011 Census, of which close to one-third are Scheduled Castes, with the district already having two Assembly seats reserved for SCs. The only other ST in the region are the Gujjars.