House panel asks Ministry of Home Affairs to expedite Bru rehabilitation

NEW DELHI: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has asked the Ministry to resolve the resettlement of Bru migrants issue within stipulated time and without cost-overruns.

The panel, headed by the Congress MP Anand Sharma, in its 238rd report on 'Demand For Grant' on the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) submitted to the Rajya Sabha on March 14, noted that the resettlement work for Bru migrants has been going on at seven out of 19 locations identified by the Tripura Government.

In its report, the committee said that there has been a delay in resettlement due to pending forest clearances for new locations, dispute amongst the local groups and Bru migrants and their reluctance to shift to certain locations identified by the State Government.

It recommended that the MHA may conduct a meeting with all the concerned stakeholders to resolve the issues hampering the commencement of resettlement work at 13 locations so that the resettlement work is completed within a time-frame and without cost-overruns.

A total of 2,021 families (out of 6,959 families) of Bru migrants have been settled in the seven identified locations, out of which House Building Allowance has been released to 1,974 families and 843 houses have been completed, Fixed Deposit (FD) of Rs 4 lakh has been released to 387 families and monthly cash assistance of Rs 5,000 has been released to 460 families, the panel noted.

However, the Ministry has furnished no information with regard to the distribution of free rations to them, the panel observed in its report.

"Therefore, it is unclear as to whether these 2,021 families are receiving all the facilities or not and the status of remaining 4,938 families is also not clear as to whether they are receiving adequate help from the Centre or the State Government or not, till their final resettlement."

The panel recommended that the Ministry provide all assistance including ration, health and education facilities for the children of the migrants, at the earliest.

It also noted that 6,000 transit accommodations will be constructed in Kashmir Valley to provide accommodation to employed Kashmiri migrants.

In its 235th report on the 'Action Taken' by the Government on the observation and recommendation made in previous reports, the Committee has expressed concern on slow progress in the construction of transit accommodation for Kashmiri migrants.

Therefore, the panel recommended that the MHA may remove bottlenecks hampering the construction of remaining transit accommodations and create a monitoring mechanism for timely completion of the remaining accommodations. Adequate allocation may be requested from the Ministry of Finance for the purpose. (IANS)

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