Guwahati: Mizoram’s Election department has deleted the names of 1,355 people belonging to the Bru community from the State’s electoral rolls following their enrolment as voters in adjoining Tripura.
More than 88% of the Bru voters who resettled in Tripura remain to be removed from the State’s electoral rolls, The Hindu reported quoting an official.
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Thousands of Brus – a mix of Christians and Hindus – had fled to Tripura due to the ethnic violence in Mizoram in 1997.
Over 35,000 of them refused to return to a life of uncertainty and chose to live in relief camps in the Kanchanpur and Panisagar subdivisions of the North Tripura district.
The issue of the internally-displaced Brus was resolved following Tripura’s decision to accommodate them permanently. A quadripartite agreement was signed among the Centre, the Mizoram and the Tripura governments and the representatives of the refugees in January 2020 to facilitate the community’s resettlement in Tripura.
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“The names of the Bru voters were removed from the electoral rolls in three of our districts following a deletion request received from the Tripura Election Department,” The Hindu quoted Mizoram’s joint chief electoral officer, David Liansanglura Pachuau as saying.
Pachuau said the process of enrolment of the Bru voters in Tripura was quite slow with 10,404 more registered voters who left Mizoram remaining to be removed as voters.
According to the Mizoram’s Election Department, 11,759 Brus including 5,751 females, who were allowed to resettle in Tripura were enrolled in the voters’ list of Mizoram.