Context:

Leaders of the Mizoram Bru refugees have demanded the commencement of their permanent rehabilitation in Tripura in light of the quadripartite agreement.

The ‘Bru agreement’

• Brus currently living in temporary relief camps in Tripura will be settled in the state if they want to stay in Tripura.
• The Bru who returned to Mizoram in the eight phases of repatriation since 2009, cannot, however, come back to Tripura.
• Under the agreement, the Bru refugees will be settled in Tripura. They will get all the rights that the residents of the state enjoy, including social welfare schemes of both Centre and state governments.
• Each of the displaced families will also be given 40×30 sq. ft. residential plots, in addition to the aid under a 2014 repatriation agreement of a fixed deposit of Rs 4 lakh, Rs 5,000 cash aid per month for 2 years, free ration for two years, and Rs 1.5 lakh to build their house.
• The Tripura government will provide the land as per this agreement.

The crisis originates

• In 1995 when Mizo organizations — the Young Mizo Association and the Mizo Students’ Association — demanded that Brus be left out of the state’s electoral rolls as they were not an indigenous tribe.
• The Brus retaliated by forming an armed organization, Bru National Liberation Front, and a political body, Bru National Union.
• The two demanded more political autonomy for Mizoram’s Brus and a Bru Autonomous District Council under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.
• In 1997, following ethnic tension over an incident in Mizoram, around 5,000 families comprising over 30,000 Bru tribals were forced to flee the state and seek shelter in Tripura, where they were housed in temporary camps at Kanchanpur.

Explain: Brus

• Bru or Reang is a community indigenous to Northeast India, living mostly in Tripura, Mizoram, and Assam.
• In Tripura, they are recognized as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.
• In Mizoram, they have been targeted by groups that do not consider them indigenous to the state.