AIZAWL:
The names of 204 Bru voters have been disenfranchised in Mizoram and more will follow suit, as they are being settled permanently in Tripura and have been enrolled in the latter’s voters’ list, said the state election commission, on May 24.
The department officials said that 204 Bru voters have been disenfranchised from three assembly constituencies in Tripura border Mamit district, three constituencies in Assam border Kolasib district, and one constituency in Bangladesh border Lunglei district of south Mizoram.
“Tripura election officials intimated the names of those Bru voters who had been enrolled in the Tripura voters lists to us so that the Mizoram election department would delete their names from our voters lists,” an election official said.
The officials said that Tripura state election commission had recently enrolled 1,090 Bru voters in the voters lists while there were another 1,786 voters applying for enrollment in Tripura state electoral rolls.
There were 11,232 Bru voters in Mizoram’s electoral rolls before the state assembly polls in the later part of 2018 but they are lodged in Tripura relief camps for over 30 years.
Ethnic tension between the majority Mizos and the Bru community triggered by the murder of a wildlife game-watcher inside Mizoram-Tripura border Dampa Tiger Reserve on October 21, 1997, by Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) insurgents, resulted in mass exodus of Brus to neighbouring Tripura.
Another exodus was triggered after the murder of a Mizo youth on November 13, 2009, which happened three days before the first round of repatriation was to begin as proposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Mizoram and Tripura state governments.
As the Brus stubbornly refused to return to Mizoram despite a plethora of attempts at repatriation and signing of the quadripartite agreement between the Centre, Tripura and Mizoram governments and the Bru leaders in January, 2020, the Bru people lodged in the relief camps in North Tripura district were allowed to remain in Tripura.
The Tripura government was tasked to provide permanent resettlement to over 32,000 Brus in Tripura, who had been staying at six relief camps in the North district since October 1997.
Despite being in Tripura since 1997, the Election Commission of India repeatedly allowed them to exercise franchise in Mizoram in the successive elections which irked the civil societies and student organisations.
Even after the January 2020 agreement allowed them to stay in Tripura permanently, a large number of Bru voters remained in the Mizoram voters’ lists till date.