Tripura: Bru Displaced People Submit Nine-Point Demands to Tripura Governor for Improved Resettlement

AGARTALA: The Bru people, having reached permanent resettlement in the four districts of Tripura following the tripartite agreement signed in New Delhi, put forward a nine-point charter of demands to the Governor of Tripura, Mr. Indrasena Reddy Nallu. This was a document that sought to include unresolved problems while pointing towards a future in which the community would live safely in their new surroundings. Speaking with gratitude towards the Indian Government and Tripura for aiding and tolerating them through 25 years of hardship in relief camps, the Bru people, thus, found a new home in their homeland; their resettlement process was agreed on between the two parties.

The Bru people acknowledged various improvements in their living conditions in those new homes, comprising the provision of house-building help, infrastructure development, and basic services like electricity, water supply, and educational facilities. However, there were still several challenges and lapses that needed instant attention. Amongst the problems, which they said were almost missing, there was the issue of land registration, through which, they stated, certainty would be drawn on the purpose of the settlements and at the same time ensure that the people could have a sense of safeness in their surroundings. They have also raised the point regarding the delays in the monthly cash disbursement, which they say was done irregularly and is one of the defects, which need their timely transfer to the beneficiary accounts.

To ensure that their future livelihoods get set up, the Bru community demanded that agricultural land be allotted to each family for their sustenance once the initial two years of free ration and cash assistance elapsed. He emphasized the need for establishing government English medium schools and Ekalavya Model Residential Schools to impart better educational opportunities to their children. Moreover, since most of the areas where the Bru people settled lacked sustainable resources, their demand was made to import centrally sponsored schemes such as old-age pension, tailored to meet the needs of their settlements.

While making the demands on behalf of the Bru migrant population settled in Tripura, the memorandum called upon the Governor to look into their demands for the welfare of all in the community in the successful implementation of the settlement plan. The document encapsulated the aspirations of the community to secure for themselves a safe and prosperous future in their new homeland.

It was the act of ethnic violence from October 1997 that led to the migration of many Bru families from North Tripura district to the district of that name. Later, it shifted to yet another round of accommodation in Tripura relief camps and later on it began to reach into the sanctum sanctorum of Kanchanpur district, which numbered approximately 30,000 persons, comprising 5,000 families.

On July 3, 2018, an important agreement was reached, wherein the Central government, along with the governments of Mizoram and Tripura, along with the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF), reached a pivotal agreement to have the Bru people settled in Tripura, possibly getting a more elegant and functioning life that had not been possible for them since the exigencies of their long-standing displacement crisis.

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