Okay, so if I disable the hand interaction poses feature alone in the XR Plugin management(while leaving Hand Tracking Subsystem active) the controller will be tracked ?
Correct, you should get hand joint tracking plus Controller tracking, with the Controller continuously tracking regardless if hands are close by (again, as long as the Controller continues to be active and doesn't go to sleep due to inactivity).
The only trick then would be to use hand joint data to obtain the missing hand gesture interactions, which is definitely doable.