Mizo civil society bodies for immediate deletion of Bru voters

A conglomerate of major civil society organisations and students' bodies of Mizoram on Tuesday asked the central and state governments to expedite the process of deletion of Bru voters living in relief camps of Tripura.

The NGO Coordination Committee said nine attempts had been made to repatriate the Bru tribe people from Tripura to their homeland Mizoram but most of them refused to return.

Now, following the quadripartite agreement allowing the Brus to permanently settle in Tripura, "their names should be immediately deleted from Mizoram's electoral roll", the Committee secretary Prof Lalnuntluanga said in a statement.

The demand came five days after Mizoram Chief Electoral Officer Ahish Kudran said names of more than 11,000 Bru community people living in relief camps will be deleted from Mizoram voters' list following the signing of the pact.

The January 16 agreement signed by representatives of the Centre, the governments of Mizoram and Tripura and Bru associations allows the Bru families who are living in six camps to permanently settle in Tripura.

"The action regarding deletion of names of the Bru voters will be taken probably during the next roll revision following provisions of the Representation of the People Act and taking approval from the Election Commission," the CEO had said.

There were a total of 12,081 Bru voters in six relief camps in Tripura during the Lok Sabha polls in April last year.

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb had said it will take at least six months to resettle the 34,000 odd members of the tribal community who are living in Tripura for 23 years.

The vexed Bru issue started from September, 1997, following demands of a separate autonomous district council by carving out areas of western Mizoram adjoining Bangladesh and Tripura.

The situation was aggravated by the murder of a forest guard in the Dampa Tiger Reserve in western Mizoram by Bru National Liberation Front insurgents on October 21 that year.

The first attempt to repatriate the Brus from Tripura was made in November 2009.

The Centre, along with the governments of Tripura and Mizoram, had been trying to repatriate them to their home state over the past one decade, with little success.