india

Updated: Nov 05, 2019 01:08 IST

The scion of Tripura’s royal family Pradyot Kishore Deb Barman on Monday supported the Brus, who have been blocking a road in the state after the Centre stopped food rations to the nearly 30,000 refugees in October after they refused to return to Mizoram.

The Bru refugees have been blocking a road between Dasda and Anandabazar at Kanchanpur in Tripura’s North district to protest the Centre’s decision to stop food and cash benefits to them. Two children and two elderly women have died inside the camps of Bru refugees amid the blockade.

“....Time has come for us to speak out and I want our Bru/Reang people to get land in our state of Tripura,” the former Congress leader Pradyot Kishore Deb Barman posted on Facebook.

Deb Barman is the son of Kirit Bikram Kishore Deb Barman, the last king of Tripura.

Deb Barman claimed in the Facebook post that he has sent 1500 kilograms of rice and other food items in the last two days to their camps and urged others to help the Brus.

“We have become Refugees in our own land and it hurts me that we are in this condition because we are not united,” he said.

Hitting out at the government, Deb Barman also questioned that if lakhs of people from Bangladesh could be accepted through the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), then why couldn’t Mizoram’s Bru people live in Tripura.

He alleged that many of them had migrated to Mizoram due to construction of the Dumbur dam, the state’s hydropower project, in 1974.

“If the Govt can consider giving 2700 acres of land for BSF firing Range then why not land for our displaced people? (sic)” he questioned.

The royal scion also tweeted that the Bru people are more Indians than those who are coming illegally from Bangladesh.

“They are our own people who were displaced during the Dumbur project! they are more Indians than millions who are illegally coming from Bangladesh (sic),” he wrote.

More than 37,000 Bru people had taken shelter in Tripura in 1997 to escape an ethnic clash in Mizoram. Nearly 4000 Bru families live in six camps—three each at Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions of North district, around 200km from state capital Agartala.

After more than two decades, the Centre had signed a pact with Tripura and Mizoram governments and MBDPF, a forum comprising Bru people, in New Delhi on July 3 last year for the repatriation of the refugees.

More than 80 Bru families have been repatriated since October 1 from these six camps. The repatriation process would continue till November 3 this year.