• Abhijit Nath, NET Correspondent, Tripura 

Agartala, December 27, 2021 : The Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla will hold a virtual meeting on January 6 to give a final shape to the ongoing rehabilitation process of the Reang (BRU) internally displaced people (IDPs) in Tripura.

All the Central & state government stakeholders will attend the virtual meeting.

Most of the refugees were shifted to temporary sheds closer to their proposed place of rehabilitation following a decision taken in a meeting on December 20 headed by Union Minister of State (MoS) Pratima Bhowmik who is also the head of the Refugee rehabilitation committee.

The meeting decided to shift all the refugees within December 22.

It is learnt that most of the refugees were shifted but some issues related to the possession of land and other amenities emerged. Therefore, the virtual meeting will try to sort-out all such issues.

The District Magistrates (DMs) of North Tripura, Dhalai, South Tripura and Gomati district where the refugees were given rehabilitation will also remain present in the virtual meeting.

Recently, Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb returned to the state after receiving approval from the Union minister of Home Affairs & Cooperation, Amit Shah to include 6,959 Bru families under Antyodaya Anna Yojana by the state government.

Its worthy to note that a quadripartite pact was signed between the Government of India (GoI), governments of Tripura and Mizoram and representatives from the Bru families in January 2020 for resettlement of 4,900 families comprising about 32,000 people across five districts of Tripura.

The central government gave a special package of Rs 600 crore to the Tripura government for their resettlement.