GUWAHATI: Mizoram’s principal opposition party, Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), has petitioned the Election Commission urging it to not allow the displaced Brus to cast their votes in the October 30 by-elections to Tuirial assembly seat.
The death of sitting MLA, Andrew H Thangliana of the ZPM necessitated the by-poll.
In a letter to the state’s Chief Electoral Officer P Jawahar, the ZPM said as the Centre had granted permission for the resettlement of the displaced Brus in neighbouring Tripura, they should not be allowed to exercise their franchise in Mizoram.
Of the 17,927 electorates in the Tuirial assembly seat, 663 are Brus and they belong to two polling stations.
In 2018, the Tripura government had made arrangements for the displaced Brus, who were lodged in six relief camps, to travel to Mizoram to cast their votes in the Assembly elections.
The ZPM had in 2018 written to the EC demanding the deletion of names of some 12,000 Bru voters from the state’s electoral roll.
A quadripartite agreement was signed in January last year among Bru leaders and Central, Tripura, and Mizoram governments for the resettlement of some 40,000 Brus (also called 'Reangs') who had fled Mizoram in 1997 in the face of ethnic violence.
Over the past two decades, more than 11,000 of them returned to Mizoram. Those who are still in Tripura are being resettled by the state government in deference to the quadripartite pact.