Mizoram deletes 1,355 displaced Bru voters’ names

This was done after a request from Tripura where some members of the community settled down permanently after fleeing ethnic violence in the 1990s

GUWAHATI

The names of 1,355 Bru people have been deleted from the electoral rolls of Mizoram 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, Mizoram’s Election Department officials said.

Thousands of Brus – a mix of Christians and Hindus – had fled the ethnic violence in Mizoram in 1997. More than 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.

“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,” Mizoram’s joint chief electoral officer, David Liansanglura Pachuau said.

The Bru voters were scattered across nine Assembly constituencies in the three districts – Mamit, Kolasib and Lunglei. More than 84% of these voters were from the Mamit district.