Aizawl, June 17 (PTI): The proposed meeting of the Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) on Bru repatriation to be held in Delhi on Tuesday was postponed on the request of the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF) leaders, a senior state Home department official said here Monday.
The JMG comprised of top officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs, senior Home department officials of both Mizoram and Tripura governments and leaders of the MBDPF, the official said.
The JMG meeting was called to deliberate on the preparedness of the stake-holders for the repatriation process.
The official said the MBDPF said that they would not be able to attend the meeting due to ill-health of their leaders and the time for holding the next meeting was yet to be scheduled.
Meanwhile, the Mizoram government has already announced its proposal to commence the ninth and final round of repatriation of Brus from October and that the process should be completed before December this year.
Preparations are in full swing from May 28, the day after the election process for Parliamentary polls was over by holding a meeting of the district core committee on Bru repatriation at the border town of Kolasib, followed by a meeting at Mizoram-Tripura-Bangladesh border Mamit town and later at Bangladesh border Lunglei town.
"The repatriated Brus would be resettled within the Assembly constituencies where they had resided in 1997, before the exodus in accordance with the guidelines of the repatriation," the official said.
While 4,185 Bru families were proposed to be resettled in Mamit district, 822 Bru families would be resettled in 10 villages in Kolasib district, 371 families would be resettled in south Mizoram's Lunglei district.
The state government and the NGO Coordination Committee, an umbrella organisation of the civil societies and student associations, which threatened to boycotted the Parliamentary polls on the issue of exercise of franchise by over 12,000 Bru voters in the relief camps, reached an agreement before the Lok Sabha polls that the repatriation process would be taken up this year and it should be the last attempt.
The agreement said that those who refuse to return to Mizoram during the proposed repatriation should stay back in Tripura and their names deleted from the Mizoram voters' lists.
Thousands of Brus continue to refuse to return to Mizoram even after the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF) apex body of the Brus in the relief camps signed an agreement with the Centre and Mizoram and Tripura governments on July three last year.
In the agreement, the Centre promised to provide Rs 4 lakh to each repatriated family by depositing in their accounts, payment of Rs 1.5 lakh for housing assistance and payment of Rs 5,000 per month to each family and free ration for two years.
The vexed Bru problem started when Bru bodies demanded a separate autonomous district council by carving out areas of western Mizoram adjoining Bangladesh and Tripura in 1997 aggravated by the murder of Lalzawmliana, a forest guard working in the Dampa Tiger Reserve by Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) insurgents on October 21, 1997.
The exodus began after Bru insurgents threatened the community members instructing them to migrate to Tripura or be in the crossfire when they attack the Mizoram Police.
The first attempt to repatriate the Brus from the six relief camps in Tripura from November 16, 2009 not only fizzled out due to the murder of a Mizo youth at Bungthuam village on November 13, 2009, but also triggered another wave of exodus.
Repeated attempts to repatriate them ended in a failure till date as more people remained in the camps.
