Lok Sabha MP from Shimla and state BJP chief Suresh Kashyap on Thursday met Union Minister Arjun Munda and sought Schedule Tribe (ST) status to Hati community of Trans-Giri area of Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh.
The ST status to Hati Community is a long pending demand of people residing in the Trans-Giri area and successive governments at the Centre and state had promised to fulfil the demand but no action had been taken since the last 20 years.
Kashyap met Munda to raise the demand of the Hati community and urged him to fulfil this demand at the earliest.
“There has been a long-standing demand to declare the Hati community of the Transgiri region as a tribal.
The Transgiri area of district Sirmour which is adjoining Jaunsar Babar of Uttarakhand comprises about 144 panchayats in four blocks of district Sirmour and has a population of about 2.75 lakh.
In 1967, the people of the Jaunsar Babar area were given ST status, however, the Hati community of the Giripar region of Himachal was not declared as a tribal.
Whereas the Trans-Giri area of Sirmaur district and the area of Jaunsar Babar of Uttarakhand were part of a princely state of Sirmaur before its accession into a union of India,” he added.
He stated that the representative of the Hati community had met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2011 and the present PM Narendra Modi in 2017 in support of their demand.
After this, all the reports sought by the concerned ministry had been sent to the Central government by the state government and besides, ethnography of the Hati community of the Trans-Giri area had also been sent to the Registrar General of India, he added.
The Union Minister assured of addressing his concerns immediately after seeking the details of the entire case.