From Our Special Correspondent
GUWAHATI: Nine days after stoppage of ration distribution among relief camps housing displaced Bru families in north Tripura, leading NGOs representing the community have decided to take the agitation route from December 13 next.
The Mizoram Bru Displaced Peoples’ Forum (MBDPF) and Mizoram Bru Indigenous Democratic Movement (MBIDM) held a joint meeting at Naisingpara on Monday and unanimously resolved to launch a democratic agitation, beginning with a sit-in demonstration in front of the office of the district magistrate and collector, Dharmanagar, Tripura North, on Friday.
As many as 5000 inmates of relief camps are scheduled to take part in the sit-in from 9am to 4 pm.
The NGOs also decided to take out a ‘long march’ from the Naisingpara relief camp to Agartala in the last week of February 2020, to meet and submit memoranda to the Tripura chief minister and Tripura Governor.
“An indefinite sit-in demonstration will be staged in New Delhi in the last week of March, 2020, where about 5000 camp inmates would take part. The protesters plan to meet and submit memoranda to the Prime Minister and Union home minister,” a joint statement issued on Monday, said.
Meanwhile, the joint meet of the NGOs expressed serious concern over the Brus who were unable to return to their ancestral homelands owing to the “unappeasable attitude of the Mizoram government and a majority from the civil society.”
The meet requested the Centre and Tripura government to immediately release ration, cash doles and other relief, including the arrear cash doles for the months of October and November 2019, as well as ration for October 2109, till rehabilitation of all the displaced Brus.
“It has been three months since cash has not distributed among the camps. The condition of the inmates has deteriorated. If ration and cash doles remain suspended for another 10 to 15 days, there will be more casualties owing to starvation like earlier and the situation might go out of hand,” the joint statement said.
The meeting also discussed and resolved that if the Centre failed to convince the Mizoram government to agree to their two demands, the internally-displaced Brus could be resettled and rehabilitated as agreed upon by the Union home minister Amit Shah and Tripura chief minister.
The NGOs had scaled down some “contentious” demands to settlement of just two issues.
These are resettlement of migrant Brus at the Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mizoram and a post-repatriation development package under the ministry of DoNER, ministry of tribal welfare and ministry of minority welfare.