Bru migrants urge EC to retain voters' names in Mizoram electoral list

The General Secretary of the Bru Displaced People's Forum, Bruno Msha, wrote to the CEC asking him to keep the names of Bru voters on the electoral roll of Mizoram

The internally displaced Bru migrants or Internally Displaced People (IDPs) on Wednesday requested the Election Commission not to delete the names of 3,500 Bru voters from the Mizoram voter list until the upcoming elections, according to a report by EastMojo.

The General Secretary of the Bru Displaced People's Forum, Bruno Msha, wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) through the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Tripura, asking him to keep the names of Bru voters on the electoral roll of Mizoram who were left out during the population census conducted by the Tripura government.

Msha emphasised that if the names of the Bru IDPs are deleted from the Mizoram voter list, several citizens of the country would be denied the right to exercise their franchise in the upcoming Mizoram polls.

Citing the petition of the Young Mizo Association, which has requested the CEO of Mizoram to delete the names of Bru voters from the electoral rolls, the letter stated that a significant number of Brus are yet to be resettled in Tripura according to the provisions of the Quadripartite Agreement.
 

"I would like to bring to your kind notice that many names of Bru IDPs are not yet registered in the electoral roll of Tripura since 651 families which are under the total 6,959 families as per the quadripartite Agreement signed on January 16, 2020, and approximately 478 families who have been left out during the population census conducted by the government of Tripura in June-August-2020 but who have the population census slip as conducted the population census by the government of Mizoram in 2016 & 2019," the letter reads.

Msha also stated in the letter that many Bru IDPs are in a dilemma about whether they would be settled in Mizoram or Tripura. Approximately 1,000 Bru voters remain on Mizoram's electoral rolls, with elections slated to take place later this year.