Mizoram’s main opposition party has asked the State’s Chief Electoral Officer to ensure that displaced Brus allowed to settle in adjoining Tripura do not cast their votes in the upcoming byelection to the Tuirial Assembly seat.
Tuirial, which goes to the polls on October 30, is in Kolasib district.
In a letter to CEO P. Jawahar on October 1, the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) said the Brus who left Mizoram and are to be settled in Tripura should not be allowed to vote. Some 40,000 Brus had fled to Tripura following ethnic tension triggered by the murder of a Mizo forest guard in 1997.
More than 11,100 Bru refugees returned to Mizoram during at least nine attempts to repatriate them until November 2019, after which a quadripartite agreement was signed for settling the others in Tripura. The agreement was signed among the Centre, the Mizoram and Tripura governments and Bru organisations.
But some 12,000 Brus are still enrolled in the voters’ list of Mizoram as the process of repatriating them to Tripura has not yet been completed.
The ZPM in November 2020 wrote to the Election Commission of India to delete the names of these 12,000 Bru voters from the electoral rolls of Mizoram.
According to the office of the State CEO, 663 of the 17,927 voters in the Tuirial seat are Brus and they are under two polling stations.
The bypoll to the Tuirial Assembly seat was necessitated by the death of MLA Andrew H. Thangliana on August 17. He belonged to the ZPM.
The ZPM’s nominee Laltlanmawia is hopeful of retaining the seat for the party against K. Laldawngliana of the ruling Mizo National Front and Chalrosanga Ralte of the Congress.
