The Joint Movement Committee (JMC) sponsored agitation against government’s decision to resettle Bru refugees is now spreading at other places in Tripura even as the government prefers to maintain a conspicuous silence. Even as Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma said that the State Government would held talks with the agitators to end the ongoing impasse, the agitation is fast spreading and more people of different places are raising voices against the planned resettlement of Bru refugees.
After Kanchanpur, now strong wind of agitation started blowing in adjoining Kailasahar too, especially among the local residents of Heeracherra ADC village under Gournagar rural development block. The reasons was the same : the decision of giving settlement to Bru refugees in the area.
In an attempt to press for their demands, the locals gathered in front of the ADC Bhavan and protested the move. Sources said, only recently the locals became aware of the development and reacted sharply. The locals feared that if the Bru refugees were settled there, the locals would be soon outnumbered by them. As it happened, the local families who had been living in the areas for the last 150 years or more till date remained bereft of their own land and basic amenities. Now the fear of them being driven out of their area was looming large.
The locals claimed, they would fight until last to prevent this settlement process.
Although Heeracherra is the oldest tea garden of the state, the locals of these areas were left in a helpless condition. For long the tea estate had no owner. Some of the workers were running tea businesses forming a committee but that too on a miniscule scale. On the other hand, lion’s share of the population sourcing their livelihoods through odd jobs such as rearing of cattle, firewood collection and agriculture in abandoned government lands.
They argued, for more than hundred years this region is mixed populated with people from different religions, indigenous people and Bengali community people. But, the government had not planned any settlement project for them. In this situation, if the Bru refugees get settlement there, the local people might not have any opportunity left to get settlement there.
Cutting across the religious lines, people of the region supported the protest and they would soon meet in a deputation to the Unakoti district magistrate.
