Tripura HC Grants Bru Refugees Voting Rights After 25 years

After a 25-year-long battle fought by the Bru refugees to receive resettlement and identity in Tripura, the High Court of Tripura has finally granted them voting rights. The court’s decision has paved the way for Bru refugees to play an important role in the electoral politics of Tripura. A shift in Tripura’s political dynamics is speculated as for the first time around 26,000 Brus will vote in the Assembly election, scheduled early next year after the process of enrolling them in the voters' list is completed. 

The ‘Bruing’ Crisis 

The Brus or the Reang is an indigenous community of Northeast India found in Mizoram, Tripura and border villages of Southern Assam having a common boundary with Mizoram. A major chunk of the Bru population lives in Mamit, Kolasib, Lunglei and Lawngtlai districts of Mizoram. Their population is highest in Mamit district, which shares a border with the North Tripura district. 

In Mizoram, the Bru is called Vai, a term for non-Mizos, indicating they are ethnically and linguistically different from Mizos. Due to the fear that non-locals will take over their land and its politics, clashes between communities in Northeast India are common. Similarly, in the 1990s, the Brus started demanding a separate territory carved out of western Mizoram where their population is highest, along with parts of Tripura and Bangladesh. 

A conflict ensued between the Mizos and the Brus in 1995. Mizo organisations demanded the removal of Brus from the state’s electoral roll, claiming that the latter was not indigenous to the state. But the successive governments didn’t agree to their demand, and soon an armed organisation called the Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) was formed. 

In October 1997, a violent clash erupted between the two communities after the BNLF killed a Mizo forest official. About 42,000 Brus fled to the North Tripura district and took refuge in relief camps. Some victims of the ethnic conflict returned to Mizoram, but most of them never want to go back despite several repatriation attempts by the Indian government. While over 40,000 Brus live in Mizoram, around 35,000 Brus, originally from the state, live in the North Tripura district.

From relief camp to the voter list

In 2000, three years after the clash, the Indian government made the first attempt to repatriate the Brus but it remained mostly unsuccessful. The Brus refused to go back to Mizoram, citing threats to life and repression. Since 2000, after nine such attempts, the government could send back only 9,000 Brus to Mizoram. 

In January 2020, after 23 years of displacement, the Centre, state governments of Tripura and Mizoram, and Bru leaders signed a quadripartite agreement where they decided to provide land for settlement to the Brus in Tripura. Though it evoked sharp protests in the North Tripura district where the Brus are concentrated, the government identified 16 places in four districts of Tripura to settle the refugees.

The need for enrolling Brus in the electoral list of the state arose out of the upcoming Village council elections in Tripura Area Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), where Bru refugees are resettled. The elections are slated for November this year. 

When the draft voter list prepared by the State Election Commission was published on September 16, a group of Brus moved the Tripura high court, asserting that though the state has 26,000 Bru settlers eligible for voting, only 5,000 were included in the voter list.

Hearing the petition of Bru leaders, the court directed the State Election Commission to include names of all eligible voters from among Bru settlers in the electoral rolls of Tripura. The Brus are happy with being granted voting rights in Tripura but continue to demand an autonomous district council in Mizoram. Bruno Msha, general secretary of Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF), tells Outlook, “We are happy to get voting rights. But we want our constitutional rights to be fulfilled, which is having an Autonomous District Council in Mizoram. It is for our safety, for safeguarding our culture. Since the repatriation process stopped after the quadripartite agreement in 2020, we cannot go back and settle in Mizoram anymore. So our demand for an autonomous council will remain unfulfilled. Voting rights are not sufficient,” he says.  

When asked about the failure of the repatriation process, Msha says that the government of Mizoram had not agreed to provide agricultural lands, and reservation in government jobs to the Brus, besides not fulfilling the demand for an Autonomous District Council. Significantly, the Brus do not intend to make a similar demand in Tripura. “If we demand an autonomous council here, the peace among the communities of Tripura will be affected,” says Bruno Msha.