Mizoram to go ahead with repatriation of Brus

The Mizoram government today decided to go ahead with the physical repatriation of Brus from six relief camps in neighbouring North Tripura district scheduled to commence from the second week of February, a senior state Home Department official said.
In a meeting of the Home Department and police officials, it was decided to meet the deadline of repatriation set in a meeting of top officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Mizoram government during the first week of January in Delhi, Additional Secretary for Home, Lalbiakzama told PTI.
The state government officials who conducted the identification in the Tripura relief camps during November two to November 23, 2016, had identified 32,857 people belonging to 5,413 families for physical repatriation.

The proposed physical repatriation scheduled to commence from November 30 could, however, not take off due to different reasons including increase in the number of bona fide residents of Mizoram from 21,000 to 32,857, necessitating revision of the expenditure estimate.
Meanwhile, a memorandum submitted to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on January 9 by the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF) made a series of demands including new ones, a state Home Department official said.
The new demand included provision of Rs 15 lakh to each repatriated Bru family, as against the earlier demand of Rs 10 lakh and payment of Rs 5,000 per family for two years after being repatriated and resettled.

The MBPDF also demanded that all the repatriated able-bodied youths should be given government jobs.
The Brus, lodged in the six relief camps since the later part of 1997 following exodus from Mizoram due to communal tension triggered by the murder of a forest official by Bru militants on October 21, 1997 would not return to Mizoram unless their demands were met, the MBDPF memorandum to Singh said.