The Centre has not supplied ration and cash dole to Bru refugees living in refugee camps for October, and the displaced people on Thursday threatened to loot godowns saying "the spectre of starvation is looming large over them".
The allowances have been suspended when the repatriation process of the Bru refugees is on.
Altogether 4,447 Bru displaced families, lodged in the relief camps at Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions of North Tripura district, are scheduled to return to neighbouring Mizoram from where they had fled since 1997 following ethnic clashes.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has stopped all allowances to the displaced Bru persons this month, Kanchanpur Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Abhedananda Baidya told PTI.
"...there will be numbers of casualty due to starvation in next few days as it is already 24 days that the rations and cash-dole has been stopped. The hungry and desperate inmates... do not have any alternative option but to block the main road, looting of Government Godowns etc for their survival [sic]," three Bru organisations wrote to the North Tripura district magistrate on Thursday.
The decision of the Ministry of Home Affairs to stop the relief facilities is "unconstitutional and in violation of human rights" as the repatriation process is scheduled to contune till November 30, the letter said.
So, the displaced Brus would have to repatriate on "empty stomach", said the letter written by the leaders of the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum, Bru Tribal Development Society and the Mizoram Bru Indigenous Democratic Movement.
The Centre had made it clear that the relief camps of Bru refugees in Tripura would be closed down and the displaced persons must be repatriated to Mizoram during the ongoing exercise, Special Secretary (internal security), Ministry of Home Affairs, A P Maheshwari, had said on October 16.
Maheswari, however, did not mention any date when the relief camps would be closed down. The repatriation is scheduled to continue till November 30.
Every adult Bru person living in a camp gets Rs 3.50 in cash and 600 grams of rice per day as allowances, while each minor receive Rs 2.50 in cash and 300 grams of rice per day, official sources said adding that they get clothes in every three years.
The Bru leaders urged the government to "withdraw its decision and continue free ration and cash-dole until an amicable solution and the repatriation process is concluded."
The Bru community, also called Reangs, is among the 21 scheduled tribes in the country. They are scattered across Assam, Mizoram and Tripura.
Meanwhile, 30 Bru families living in relief camps in Tripura left for their homeland Mizoram on Thursday during the on-going repatriation, officials said in Aizawl.
With this 30, a total of 178 Bru families have been repatriated since the ninth round of the exercise, which is termed as the "final" repatriation, began on October 3.
During the eighth round of repatriation, the Ministry of Home Affairs had warned that the relief camps would be closed down from October one 2018 and free ration and money doled to the displaced families would be discontinued. However, that phase did not bear much fruit.
While the MHA did stop the free ration and cash dole from October one, 2018, the Centre restarted it apparently due to political reasons as Mizoram assembly election was nearing.
The Centre has approved Rs 350 crore for the ninth phase of repatriation and the amount covers transportation and rehabilitation package expenses, which include Rs 5,000 per month for each resettled Bru family in Mizoram and free ration for them for two years.
Eight attempts had been made to repatriate the Brus and only around 1,681 families have returned to Mizoram since 2010 and were resettled in Mamit, Kolasib and Lunglei districts.
The vexed Bru problem started when the Bru people, spearheaded by an organisation, Bru National Union, demanded a separate autonomous district council by carving out areas of western Mizoram adjoining Bangladesh and Tripura in September, 1997.
The situation was aggravated by the murder of a forest guard in the Dampa Tiger Reserve in western Mizoram by Bru National Liberation Front insurgents on October 21, 1997.
The first attempt to repatriate the Brus from Tripura from November 16, 2009 not only fizzled out due to the murder of a Mizo youth at Bungthuam village on November 13, 2009, but also triggered another wave of exodus.
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