The Bru refugees staying at relief camps in North Tripura district have demanded permanent residential and Scheduled Tribe certificates during the ongoing process of their resettlement in Tripura.
The Tripura government has already started the process for rehabilitating 33,000 displaced Brus from neighbouring Mizoram.
Thousands of the Bru community people have been living in relief camps in two sub-divisions of North Tripura district since 1997.
They had fled Mizoram to the neighbouring state because of ethnic clashes.
Bruno Msha, the general secretary of Mizoram Bru Displaced Peoples Forum (MBDPF), in a letter to the Tripura Chief Secretary, Manoj Kumar, this week has demanded issuance of ST and permanent residence certificates for the Brus.
Meanwhile, the Joint Movement Committee (JMC) of Kanchanpur sub-division in North Tripura district has decided to launch an indefinite protest against the government’s decision to settle around 6,000 displaced Bru families in the sub-division.
The JMC, comprising Nagarik Surakhsa Mancha and Mizo Convention of the sub-division, had organised a series of protests demanding that the Brus be settled in all the eight districts of Tripura.
Zairemthiama Pachuau, chairman of the Committee, said, “We had a meeting with the district magistrate of North Tripura District and we received some kind of assurance that maximum 1,500 families will settle here.
“But now they are trying to settle 6,000 families. If they go ahead with this, the entire sub-division will be affected environmentally, ecologically, socially and demographically which is not acceptable,” he said.