Pahari is an Urdu word meaning people living on the mountains. The State of Jammu and Kashmiris mostly hilly and a large number of people live in the mountains. In that sense most of the people in the State would be called Paharis. However, that is not the ground position. Pahar in Kashmiri language is generally used for the mountain ranges that immediately appear once one leaves the Valley. Thus in geographical terms people living on the mountain ranges from Karnah in Kupwara district down to Poonch in Jammu region like to call themselves Paharis. They are not migratory like the Gujjars and Bakarwals. They speak a language that is somewhere between Kashmiri and Punjabi or Kashmiri and Gojri. Parts of the Pahari speaking range falls in PoK as well.
Paharis have been demanding Scheduled Tribe status for the community and as such they seek 5 per cent reservation for Pahari speaking people in Government jobs. The State Governmentintroduced a bill in the Legislative Assembly two years ago endorsing reservation for the Pahari speaking people of the State. As far as the grant of Scheduled Tribe status is concerned, the Government appointed an expert committee which recommended the grant of such status to the community. However, the Governor withheld his assent to the bill that stipulated reservation for the Pahari speaking people. The Governor was of opinion that only on the basis of speaking Pahari, reservation could not be made. The bill was returned to the Government. It made rounds at various departments since the Government had desired that the observations of the Governor be accommodated, the draft bill has finally landed in the office of the State Backward Classes Commission since March 2015 where it has been collecting dust ever since. The reason why the bill is not disposed of by the Commission is that the Commission remains headless and when the Chairman is not appointed the bill remains pending. Though, recently a retiredbureaucrat has been appointed as Chairman but other members have not been selected and the Commission cannot dispose of cases like these. In the same way the repot of the expert committee is lying with Registrar General of India for its opinion since August 2016. The Bill proposing five percent reservation to Pahari-speaking people by amending the J&K Reservation Rules was passed by the State Legislature in August 2014 and then sent to the Governor for his concurrence in first week of October 2014. However, it could not elicit Governor’s assent for the reason specified above.
The present status of both cases, viz. reservation for Pahari-speaking peoples and declaration of Paharis as Scheduled Tribes are pending for last two years and more. Looking in retrospect, the Pahari community feels aggrieved that they are losing five per cent reservation as has been stipulated in the draft bill and the community is unhappy with the delaying tactics of the Government.
The delayed status of the bill shows that the Government is not interested in pushing the matter for a quick decision. The PDP-BJP Government, too, is not showing any extraordinary interest in expediting the settlement of the twin demand of the Pahari speaking people. Some observers believe that there was not really a strong movement among the concerned people to fight for the ST status of the Pahari community but the issue has been politicized and some political forces are working behind the curtain to scuttle both reservation and ST status for the Paharis. Anyway, whatever the background, both the demands of the Paharis have to go through a process that is well defined in the rules. The real complaint is about delaying tactics of the Government and as such, we expect the Government to move the matter.
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