Tripura polls: Dilemma for first-time Bru voters in their new home
The Hindu
Over 14,000 Brus displaced from Mizoram have been registered to vote in Tripura since their rehabilitation process began in April 2021, but they are divided on which party should get the credit
Dharmendra Reang is a first-time voter at 29, an aberration in politically conscious Tripura.
He did try to enrol after turning 18 but was a person without a State. Like some 40,000 other Bru tribespeople, he was caught between Mizoram and Tripura until a quadripartite accord in January 2020 removed the uncertainty from his electoral identity. Tripura will go to the polls on February 16.
“To be able to vote is a great feeling, especially after several failed attempts to be registered as a voter in Mizoram,” said Mr. Dharmendra Reang, a cook in a Thiruvananthapuram hotel, displaying his election photo identity card.
His five-member family is one of the 440 Bru refugee families now settled permanently in Haduklao Natunbasti, about 3 km off National Highway 8, which snakes through Tripura’s Dhalai district. The new settlement, one of 11 so far, has plots allotted for 60 more families.
Haduklao Natunbasti is about 75 km from Tripura’s capital Agartala and “six hours by public transport” from the village in Mizoram’s Mamit district where Mr. Reang was born. He has no memory of the place he was forced to leave following a wave of ethnic violence in 1997, driving his family to a relief camp in Tripura.
“I would hardly spend 30 days on leave from Kerala when we were at the Naisingpara relief camp. I have now spent almost thrice the time to get my voter ID and vote on February 16,” he said.
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