Pervaiz Malik Afridi demand ST status for Pahari speaking People

Adil Hamdani

Mandi, April 19:–Chairman Ehsaas Foundation Poonch Pervaiz Malik Afridi demanded ST status for Pahari Community. He said,Pahari speaking people literally belongs to hilly mountainous areas of Jammu and Kashmir. Like other ethnic groups, the Pahari speaking people are also socioeconomically and educationally backward and are lying at the bottom of the developmental ladder. To promote and safeguard the socioeconomic interests of this weaker section, number of alleviative measures has been drafted by the government of the state. Besides the alleviative measures, the Pahari speaking people have vehemently propounded the demand for scheduled tribe status as granted to other ethnic groups in 1991. The demand of the Pahari speaking people for scheduled tribe status was greatly endorsed by the ruling political parties of the state. But these Paharis speaking people being a linguistic group from different religions were found not eligible for the inclusion in the scheduled tribe list. Despite being a linguistic group, the demand of the paharis were vehemently advocated by all the political parties and ruling governments of the state from the 1990’s onwards. All this conundrum needs to be explored that if the Paharis are not found eligible for the scheduled tribe status then how come their demand are being strongly advocated by the ruling political parties for their inclusion in the scheduled tribe list. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the claims of the Paharis speaking people and explore the political commitments made by the different leaders for the reservation of these Pahari speaking people.