Talking to mediapersons here today, Rural Development Minister Jitendra Choudhury said Tripura had been taking the burden of Mizoram residents who had fled from Western Mizoram following ethnic clash in 1997 and recently few more hundred of the Brus took shelter while Karimganj district (Assam) administration pushed out three hundred more refugees from that state.
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar visited the refugee camps and interacted with the refugee leaders following which held a meeting with Union Home Minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi and urged him to ensure early return of the Bru refugees. The Tripura Chief Secretary also spoke to his Mizoram counterpart regarding their repatriation but no concrete results had come out yet.
The Tripura Rural Development Minister pointed out that the Mizoram government was not considering the issue seriously and instead ''playing political cards with the innocent Brus'', which was complicating the situation.
''But we have decided to supply ration and clothes to the refugees on humanitarian ground and to save their lives,'' Mr Choudhury said.
Meanwhile, the Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) outfit has sought the intervention of Central as well Mizoram government to start the process of repatriation and sort out the issue.
The BNLF termed the killing of a Mizo youth as a ''conspiracy hatched to derail the repatriation process'' and sought immediate steps to nab the killers.