AIZAWL: At least 276 names of Bru voters out of more than 11,700 Bru people of Mizoram, who have been lodged at Tripura transit camps for over two decades and allowed to permanently resettle in the neighbouring state, have so far been deleted from Mizoram electoral roll, an election official said.

Major civil society organisations and political pirates have been demanding the removal of names of Bru voters, who already settled in Tripura, from the state voter list.

Mizoram joint chief electoral officer David Liansanglura Pachuau said that the Trirpura state election department has sent corresponding deletion requests to delete the names of Bru voters, who have resettled and enrolled in the state’s voter list, from the Mizoram voter list.

Till Monday, the Mizoram election department had received corresponding deletion requests to defrenchise names of 276 Bru voters from nine assembly constituencies in three districts, who failed to return to the state during repatriation and already resettled in Tripura, he said.

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He said that names of 185 Bru voters from three assembly constituencies in Tripura border Mamit district, 86 from three constituencies in Assam border Kolasib district and 5 from three constituencies in Bangladesh border Lunglei district have been deleted from the state voter list by respective district election officers.

He said that the Tripura state election department had recently enrolled 1,090 Bru voters in the state voter list, while another 1,786 Bru voters were applying for enrollment in Tripura electoral rolls.

Pachuau also said the Bru voters, who have been re-settled in Tripura and already enrolled in the state voter list would be deleted from MIzoram electoral roll in a phased manner whenever a corresponding deletion request is received from Tripura and their enrolment appeared in EROnet (Electoral Roll Officer net).

According to him, as many as 11,759 Bru voters, including 5,751 female voters, who have been in transit camps and already allowed to resettle in Tripura, were enrolled in Mizoram voter list.

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Of the three districts where the Brus voters hail from,  Mamit district housed the highest at 8,885, followed by Kolasib district, which has 1,979 voters, while 895 belonged to Lunglei district, he said.

Thousands of Brus migrated to Tripura fearing ethnic tension in 1997.

There have been at least nine attempts to repatriate them to Mizoram with the last round of repatriation being organised between October and November, 2019.

More than 11,000 Bru people had returned to Mizoram during such repatriation exercises.

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As per the agreement signed among the Centre, governments of Mizoram and Tripura and representatives of Bru organisations in January 2020, the resettlement of more than 35,000 displaced Bru tribals in Tripura is under process.

In the past, the Bru voters used to exercise their franchise through postal ballots at their relief camps in Tripura until the assembly polls in 2018 and Lok Sabha polls in 2019 when exclusive polling stations were set up for the Bru voters at Kanhmun in Mizoram-Tripura border.

NGO Coordination Committee, a conglomerate of civil society organisations headed by Central Young Mizo Association (CYMA) had strongly opposed special polling booths for Bru voters during the bypoll to Tuirial assembly held in October last year.

None of the 663 Bru voters in Tuirial assembly constituency came to Mizoram and cast their votes in the bypoll.