In a press conference, MZP president Lalhmachhuana said, “Regarding the Bru refugees who have been for the last 15 years creating problems from outside Mizoram to the Mizos here, we find it utmost necessary to tie the last knot (indicating completion of repatriation process), and so we want conclusion.”
“It is apparent that as long as the Bru refugees are included in the Mizoram electoral roll, the Election Commission of India would like to arrange so as to ensure they exercise their franchise conveniently and fully, because of which we want immediate and complete repatriation of genuine residents of Mizoram, and this simultaneously do away with vote casting outside the State”, MZP president said.
Adding that MZP plans to make a move as the situation demands Lalhmachhuana said, “Mizoram government is not in a debt of allotting voting right to those people who do not want to be a good citizen and moreover who resist to come back despite repeated calls.”
“MZP shall take every possible step in a vigorous way so that those not complying with arrangement made for them get deleted from the Electoral Roll”, he added. Also talking about the demand of Gorkhalis in Mizoram for the constitutional status of Other Backward Class (OBC), MZP said that they will not in any way agree with the same.
‘We shall not in any way allow the same to be materialized”, MZP president said, adding, “What the Indian constitution referred to as OBC are those economically and educationally backward but the Gorkhalis in Mizoram are, being indigenous people, quite high in educational rate as well as well to do economically and in fact, some of them are even better off than the Mizos.”
It is pertinent to note that hundreds of Brus left Mizoram in 1997 and 2009. The first case was triggered when Bru militants murdered two Mizos who were forest guards on October 21, 1997. The second case happened after a 17-year-old Mizo boy was killed by the Brus near Bungthuam village on November 13, 2009. When the Bru left Mizoram they had driven out some Mizos in villages of Sakhan Hill Range in Tripura like Sakhan Serhmun, Sakhan Tlangsang, Sakhan Tualsen and Upper Dosda which had kicked up much ruckus in Mizoram then.
Meanwhile, a couple of years ago, head count conducted by the MBDPF found that there had been 31,703 Brus in the relief camps belonging to 5,448 families who were bona fide residents of Mizoram.
The repatriation of the 1997 batch of Bru refugees was underway until it stalled by the November 13 killing.
In the year 2011, conglomeration of major NGOs in Mizoram had submitted a joint memorandum to the then Union Home minister P Chidambaram to rehabilitate the displaced Mizos in Tripura and stall the ongoing repatriation of Brus from Tripura to Mizoram. The memorandum was signed by representatives of four large NGOs in the state--the Young Mizo Association (YMA), the MZP, the Mizoram Upa Pawl (MUP) or elders association and the Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl (MHIP) or the women›s federation and four political parties.