Aizawl: The Election Commission has enrolled over 5,600 displaced Bru tribals from Mizoram as permanent voters in Tripura, following their re-settlement in the neighbouring state, an official said on Tuesday.
The enrolled Bru voters, who originally hailed from Mizoram, are living in Tripura since 1997, and were settled permanently in the neighbouring state in accordance with the quadripartite agreement signed in January 2020.
Mizoram’s Joint Chief Electoral Officer David Liansanglura Pachuau told PTI that the names of 1,594 Bru voters from nine assembly constituencies out of 5,600 have been removed from Mizoram electoral roll so far, as per the corresponding deletion requests received from Tripura.
The Bru voters removed from the Mizoram list included 1,379 from three constituencies Mamit district at the Tripura border, 187 from three constituencies in Kolasib district at the Assam border, and 28 others from three constituencies in Lunglei district at the Bangladesh border, the official said.
Stating that the pace of deletion requests is quite slow, he urged Tripura’s poll officials to expedite the process.
As many as 11,759 Bru voters, including 5,751 females, who have been allowed to resettle in Tripura, were enrolled in Mizoram.
Officials of Tripura said that the process of resettlement of about 35,000 Bru voters is in progress.
Thousands of Brus had fled to Tripura following ethnic tension triggered by the murder of a Mizo forest officer by Bru militants in 1997. Since then they have been living in transit camps.
The first repatriation attempt in November 2009 was not only scuttled by the murder of a Mizo villager by Bru militants, but also triggered another round of exodus.
The Centre and the governments of Mizoram and Tripura had made at least nine attempts to repatriate the Bru tribals from Tripura between 2009 and 2019.
On January 16, 2020, the Centre, and the governments of Mizoram and Tripura and representatives of several Bru organisations signed an agreement, according to which over 35,000 displaced Bru tribals, who failed to return to Mizoram during repatriation, were allowed to re-settle permanently in Tripura.
Follow on Twitter | Posted by Neha Khan | 
