Over 2,000 Bru voters removed from Mizoram electoral roll

The names of more than 2,000 Bru voters have been deleted from the electoral roll of Mizoram following their enrolment in neighbouring Tripura's voter list, an election official said.

Mizoram Joint Chief Electoral Officer David Liansanglura Pachuau said the state election department has received the deletion request of over 3,000 names from its Tripura counterpart so far.

Of this, the names of 2,091 Bru voters have been removed from Mizoram's voter list to date and deletion of the remaining voters is underway, he said.

The official said the Bru voters, who resettled in Tripura after not returning to Mizoram during repatriations, were electors of nine assembly constituencies in three districts of Mizoram.

Among the disenfranchised Bru voters, 1,643 hailed from Mamit, 187 from Kolasib and 262 from Lunglei district, he said.

He said the deletion was done as per the requests sent by the Tripura election department through Electoral Roll Officer Net (ERONet).

Pachuau said they have requested their counterparts in Tripura to expedite enrollment of the Bru voters in the state's voter list as Mizoram is due for assembly election next year.

Thousands of Bru voters had fled to Tripura following ethnic tensions triggered by the murder of a Mizo forest officer by Bru militants in 1997.

Since then, they 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 it also triggered another round of exodus.

The Centre and governments of Mizoram and Tripura had made at least nine attempts between 2009 and 2019 to repatriate the Bru tribals from Tripura.

On January 16, 2020, the Centre, governments of Mizoram and Tripura and representatives of several Bru organisations signed an agreement, according to which over 35,000 displaced Bru tribals, who were reluctant to return to Mizoram during repatriation, were allowed to resettle permanently in Tripura.

The state is set to go into elections in 2023.