AGARTALA, Oct 29: Around 2,000 Bru families, who were
rehabilitated in Tripura’s Dhalai district, as part of an
agreement three years back, have not been paid monthly
stipend for the past one year putting them in distress, a
leader of the settlers claimed.
In a letter to District Magistrate SS Jaiswal, Bruhapara
settlement area assistant in-charge Karanjoy Reang said, the
internally displaced tribal people who had to flee their home
state Mizoram due to ethnic conflicts have not received the
allowance since October 2022.
A senior state government official said the stipend is given to
the Brus by the Centre and the delay could be due to some
technical problems.
“The delay in obtaining the monthly cash assistance will put
the Bru families in great financial difficulty. In this context, I
request you to kindly take the necessary steps to see that
they can get cash assistance,” Reang’s letter to the district
magistrate read.
According to the agreement, each of a total of 6,953 Bru
family is eligible to get a monthly stipend of Rs 5,000 for two
years and certain other facilities including a plot of land, Rs
1.5 lakh for constructing a house on it and a one-time
allowance of Rs 4 lakh.
The pact was signed by representatives of the Brus, the
central, Tripura and Mizoram governments in New Delhi in
January 2020.
“The disbursement of monthly allowance is irregular, leading
to a difficult situation for the Bru inmates who are
permanently settled in their locations. We had taken up the
matter with the district authorities but there is no change
yet,” Bruno Msha, the general secretary of Mizoram Bru
Displaced Peoples’ Forum (MBDPF) told PTI over phone.
When contacted, Paramananda Sarkar Banerjee, OSD to the
CM, said the stipend to the Bru settlers is directly given by
the Centre.
“The release of stipend is not pending. If anything has
happened, it might be because of some technical faults as
the payment is made digitally,” he told PTI.
Msha who lives in Ashapara Bru settlement in North Tripura’s
Kanchapur subdivision also alleged that despite assurance,
not each family got land.
Over 600 Bru families, out of 6,953, are “yet to get resettled
in new areas because of changing locations in Dhalai and
North Tripura districts”, Msha, who is among the signatories
of the agreement, claimed.
Thousands of the Bru tribal people have been living in relief
camps in Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions since 1997.
They had fled their homeland Mizoram to reach the
neighbouring state because of ethnic clashes. By now, their
number has risen to over 30,000.
The Bru issue started in September 1997, following demands
of a separate autonomous district council by carving out
areas of western Mizoram adjoining Bangladesh and Tripura.
A large number of Bru people fled from Mizoram to Tripura
as ethnic clashes broke out.
The situation was aggravated by the murder of a forest guard
by Bru National Liberation Front insurgents on October 21
that year.
The Centre, along with the governments of Tripura and
Mizoram, had tried several times to repatriate them to their
home state, with little success. The first such attempt was
made in November 2009 and the last one in 2019.
Many Bru families had refused to return to Mizoram, citing
security concerns and inadequate rehabilitation packages.
Some others had also sought a separate autonomous council
for the community.
However, the January 2020 agreement has allowed these
tribal people to permanently settle in Tripura. (PTI)
