Aizawl, Nov 11: Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh today announced that the commission would soon take a decision on the contentious issue of inclusion of Bru community members, now lodged in Tripura refugee camps, in Mizoram voters list. "The Save Mizoram Committee (SMC) are apprehensive about the 4,266 Brus, included in the voters list here, being allowed to vote while others said that if at all they are allowed to vote they should come to the state from the camps in Tripura to exercise their franchise,” he told a press conference.

He said that he would go back to delhi and soon take a decision but maintained that the matter was "political" and it was up to politicians to take a decision.

Earlier, Lyngdoh who met political parties and officials ahead of the November 20 assembly poll, said the SMC had submitted a memorandum protesting against the inclusion of Brus in the voters list.

The Bru issue is the only bone of contention of otherwise peaceful poll scenario in the state with the SMC, an umbrella organisation of all the major political parties and NGOs, threatening to boycott the election if the Brus were allowed to vote.

The CEC said that he wrote to the Prime Minister a couple of months back and was hopeful that some solution would be reached on the matter of the Brus.
"My job is to ensure free and fair poll and no one who is an Indian national and above the age of 18 can be deprived of their voting rights,” the CEC said.


Lyngdoh said that additional armed forces were being put in the problem areas bordering Myanmar and the Bru inhabited constituencies numbering ten in the state.
Bureau Report