Re-identification of Brus in Tripura camps to be completed by

Re-identification of bona fide residents of Mizoram as part of the repatriation process of Bru refugees lodged in relief camps in Tripura was expected to be completed by July 20, state Home Secretary Lalbiakzama said here on Monday.

Officials from Mamit, Kolasib and Lunglei districts would conduct the head count to figure out who are willing to return to Mizoram, from where the Bru community people had fled to Tripura in 1997 due to ethnic unrest.

The physical repatriation of the Bru people from Tripura to Mizoram is scheduled to begin by September or October which would be determined by the length of monsoon, state Home Secretary Lalbiakzama told PTI.

 

Re-identification was necessitated as there is a possibility of change in the number of people in the camps due to births and deaths, and availability of proper documents, official sources said.

In the previous head count conducted in November last year, 32,876 Brus belonging to 5,407 families are lodged in six relief camps in North Tripura district.

Of them, only 33 families had returned during repatriation in 2018 and 5,374 Bru families were estimated to have been remaining in the relief camps.

The Centre, in association with the governments of Mizoram and Tripura, had been repatriating the displaced Brus in phases.

The Centre, state governments of Mizoram and Tripura and the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF), the apex body of the Bru community in the relief camps, had on July 3 signed an agreement for repatriation of all the Bru refugees from Tripura before September 30.

As the move did not succeed, it was decided to resume the process this year.

The Centre had earlier decided to discontinue all kinds of subsistence allowances, including ration supplies and cash dole, to the Bru refugees from October 1 last year, but continued with the assistance on humanitarian grounds.

Meanwhile, the Bru refugees recently demanded that Mizoram government resettle them in southern Mizoram due to "shortage of land" in Mamit and Kolasib districts where majority of them were to be resettled, official sources said.

The state government rejected the demand saying that the July 3 agreement should stand, the sources said.

According to the pact, the families would have to be resettled in those districts where they used to stay before fleeing to Tripura.

The Brus are in Tripura since late 1997 in the wake of a communal tension triggered by the murder of a forest guard inside the Dampa Tiger Reserve on October 21, 1997 by Bru National Liberation Front militants.

The first attempt to repatriate them in 2009 failed and triggered another wave of exodus after the killing of a youth three days before the commencement of the repatriation process.