AIZAWL:
At least 5,600 displaced Brus from neighbouring Mizoram have been enrolled as permanent voters in Tripura, while Mizoram election department deleted only 1,365 Bru voters from the state voters’ lists till date.
With a little over 11,000 Bru voters, sheltered in Tripura relief camps since the last part of 1997, were enrolled in Mizoram electoral rolls, more than half of them have been enrolled in Tripura voters’ lists in a phase manner.
Tripura election officials said that 5,600 Bru voters included in the state electoral rolls would be treated as permanent residents of Tripura after they shifted to government designated villages and their names were included in the register of resident (RoR) document.
The election department would issue photo Identity cards only after the block development officers (BDOs) confirm that their names were included in ROR.
Mizoram joint chief electoral officer David Liansanglura Pachuau said that deletion of the names of Bru voters was undertaken at a snail’s pace as corresponding deletion requests, received from the Tripura election officials through ERONet, was extremely slow.
“We promptly and automatically deleted most of the names received for corresponding deletion requests received from Tripura, but the process could not be expedited,” Pachuau said.
The process of enrolment of Bru voters, who were to be resettled permanently, in the Tripura electoral rolls was scheduled to be completed by August, but could not be completed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
An agreement was signed between Brus and two governments – Tripura and Mizoram in presence of the union Home Minister, Amit Shah on January 15, 2020 that 37,000 Brus, who refused to be repatriated to Mizoram, would be resettled in different government declared locations and they would be entitled for a package.