Tripura Govt resume food, relief supply to Reangs until January 2019

The Tripura government on Monday resumed the supply of food and relief material to refugees, sheltered in camps in the northern parts of the state for the past 21 years.

Following a four-partite agreement in Delhi on July 3, the supply of food grains and relief material was stopped from October 1, ostensibly to compel the Reang tribal migrants to return to Mizoram from where they had fled in October 1997.

The refugees, comprising 5,907 families, have been staying in Tripura’s Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions following ethnic tension after a Mizo forest official was killed.

Tripura Education and Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath, accompanied by Tripura Assembly Deputy Speaker Biswabandhu Sen, two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs, North Tripura District Magistrate Raval Hamendra Kumar and other officials formally restarted the supply of food grains and relief material to the refugees on Monday.

Nath, while addressing a gathering of the tribal refugees, said that life in the makeshift refugee camps was not good, specially for the younger generation.

“After the Union Home Ministry stopped the supply of relief to the refugees, Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb talked to the Home Ministry to resume the supply of rations and other services immediately,” Nath said asking the refugees to return to their homeland