Leader of the displaced Bru Reang people, Bruno Msha on Monday demanded that at least 50 percent of about 40 thousand displaced Brus would be settled in Kanchanpur sub-division under North Tripura District. Msha further said Bru Reangs consider all the Bengalis as their brothers and sisters.
Msha said this after a meeting with Deputy Chief Minister of Tripura Jishnu Dev Varma and State Tribal Welfare Minister Mebar Kumar Jamatia today in Agartala. It is learnt Dev Varma stressed on implementation of Bru rehabilitation without safeguarding interests of locals.
Notably, Bru Reangs fled their native place in Mizoram after an ethnic clash and took refuge at six shelter camps in North Tripura district more than two decades ago.
In January 2020, a multi-corner meeting was held in New Delhi in presence Union Home Minister Amit Shah and it was decided that the displaced Bru people would be considered as citizen of Tripura and they would be rehabilitated in different places in Tripura along with several rehabilitation packages.
However, the agreement did not go down well with local inhabitants of Kanchanpur sub-division where most of the Brus took shelter after fleeing from Mizoram. Both the Bengalis and Mizo people of Tripura vehemently opposed rehabilitation of more than 500 Bru families in Kanchanpur sub-division.
Meanwhile, referring to today’s meeting with Deputy Chief Minister, Msha said, the meeting aimed to expedite the process of resettlement.
Reacting to the protests by Bengalis and Mizos of Tripura, he said, “All the Bengalis are brothers and sisters of ours and there is no communal tension between us”. According to him, only a handful of people tried to misguide the larger population that resulted in the protests.
Sources said, the Deputy Chief Minister heavily stressed on the matter of local interest and told the Bru leaders that the process of resettlement would be completed peacefully. “The matter will be completed peacefully, and the interest of locals in each of the stretches where the Brus are going to be settled will be protected”, the deputy Chief Minister had been quoted as saying by the Bru leaders.
He said, as per the government’s decision the Bru refugees will be settled here in Tripura. The Central government and the state government have agreed on the issue and the protest from a section of people is not acceptable at all. The Brus are peaceful people and they want to co-reside in peace with the local inhabitants be it indigenous people or the Bengalis, he added.
According to him, the entire resettlement process will be executed in six selected stretches of the state spread in six different districts of the state. There should not be any opposition to the quadripartite meeting, he felt.
