Aizawl: The names of 1,355 Bru voters from Mizoram, who re-settled in Tripura after the Bru settlement in 2020, have been removed from the state’s voter list following their enrolment in the neighbouring state’s electoral roll, an official of the Mizoram election department said Wednesday.
State joint chief electoral officer David Liansanglura Pachuau said that a total of 1,144 Bru voter names from Mamit district bordering Tripura, 187 from Kolasib district bordering Assam and 24 others from Lunglei district bordering Bangladesh have been deleted from the state voter list as per the correspondent deletion request received from Tripura election department through Electoral Roll Officer Net (ERONet) till Tuesday.
The Bru voters hailed from nine assembly constituencies in the three districts, he said.
Pachuau said that the process of enrollment of Bru voters in Tripura voter list and deletion in Mizoram side is currently in progress.
He said that the pace of entry of requests for deletion through ERONet is quite slow due to several reasons, including technical issues, faced by Tripura.
“We are contemplating to write to the Tripura government to expedite the process keeping in mind the state assembly elections due next year,” he said.
According to the Mizoram election department, as many as 11,759 Bru voters, including 5,751 female voters, who have been allowed to re-settle in Tripura, were enrolled in Mizoram’s voter list.
Sources from Tripura said that the process of resettlement of about 35,000 of Bru voters is in progress.
Thousands of Bru voters had fled to Tripura following ethnic tension triggered by the murder of a Mizo forest officer by the erstwhile Bru militant in 1997.
Since then, the Brus have been living in transit camps for more than two decades.
The first repatriation attempt in November 2009 was not only scuttled by the murder of a Mizo villager by the Bru militants, but also triggered another round of exodus.
The Centre and governments of Mizoram and Tripura had made at least nine attempts to repatriate the Bru tribals from Tripura between 2009 and 2019.
On January 16, 2020 the Centre, governments of Mizoram and Tripura, and representatives of several Bru organisations had signed an agreement, according to which over 35,000 displaced Bru tribals, who failed to return to Mizoram during repatriation, would be re-settled in Tripura.
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