Not a single Bru refugee returned to Mizoram on the first day on Saturday of the final repatriation exercise from the six relief camps in North Tripura, officials said.
A senior home department official of Mizoram Government said that the State Government machinery was waiting to conduct the repatriation, but none of the 32,000-odd refugees from the transit camps in Kanchanpur sub-division of North Tripura turned up to return home.
He said that the state government would go ahead with the repatriation schedule between August 25 and September 25 even if no one was ready to be repatriated.
The schedule has been drawn up by the Centre and the governments of Tripura and Mizoram.
Sub-Divisional Police Officer (Kanchanpur) Kiran Kumar said the repatriation could not take off today because no one turned up.
“Officials from local administration of Tripura and Mizoram government waited for refugees with arrangement for repatriation, but they did not come,” Kumar told PTI.
Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Coordination Committee (MBDPCC) president l laldingliana said none of the refugees want to return to Mizoram unless the Centre accepts their pending demands which include an Area Development Council (ADC), cluster villages, one-time cash payment etc.
In the last identification process conducted in November 2016, 32,876 Brus belonging to 5,407 families were treated as bonafide residents of Mizoram who could be repatriated.
During a recent exercise to determine who wanted to return to Mizoram, 2,753 people belonging to 423 families — a majority of them from Kasakau relief camp in Tripura — expressed willingness to return home.
Seven phases of repatriation have been held till day but several of them who repatriated returned later.
The Centre was optimistic that the Bru families would return to Mizoram during this final repatriation process after the agreement on July 3 signed by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, chief ministers of Mizoram and Tripura and Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum (MBDPF) chief in Delhi.
In accordance with the agreement, all the Bru refugees were to be repatriated before September 30. The Centre had also said that all the relief camps housing the Bru refugees would be closed down after September 25.