Names of over 1,300 Tripura-settled Brus deleted from Mizoram's electoral roll

A section of Bru tribals who had put up in Tripura transit camps for more than two decades after fleeing Mizoram owing to ethnic tension have been allowed to resettle in the neighbouring state as they failed to return home during successive repatriation exercises.Mizoram joint chief electoral officer David Liansanglura Pachuau told PTI that enrolment of re-settled Bru tribals in Tripuras voter list was in progress.

Names of more than 1,300 Bru people, who have re-settled in Tripura as per a quadripartite agreement signed in 2020, have been deleted from Mizoram's voter list following their enrolment in the neighbouring state's electoral roll, an election official said on Friday. A section of Bru tribals who had put up in Tripura transit camps for more than two decades after fleeing Mizoram owing to ethnic tension have been allowed to resettle in the neighbouring state as they failed to return home during successive repatriation exercises.

Mizoram joint chief electoral officer David Liansanglura Pachuau told PTI that enrolment of re-settled Bru tribals in Tripura's voter list was in progress. Pachuau said that he had come to know from officials in Tripura that at least 5,009 Bru tribals have so far been enrolled in the neighbouring state's electoral roll.

So far, a total of 1,336 names of Bru voters, who have enrolled in the electoral roll of the neighbouring state, have been removed from Mizoram's voter list, the official said. Fearing ethnic clashes following the murder of a Mizo forest guard inside Dampa Tiger Reserve of Mamit district in 1997, thousands of Bru people fled their homes and migrated to Tripura.

The Centre and governments of Mizoram and Tripura had made at least nine attempts to repatriate the Bru tribals between 2009 and 2019. However, only about 11,000 Bru people had returned to Mizoram during such exercises. On January 16, 2020, the Centre, two state governments and representatives of several Bru organisations signed an agreement, as part of which over 35,000 displaced Bru tribals, who failed to return to Mizoram during the repatriation exercises, were allowed to re-settle in Tripura.