The Supreme Court has issued show-cause notices the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Mizoram and Tripura governments asking them why they have not taken steps to rehabilitate the Reang community in Mizoram.

A Division Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Justice R C Lahoti, while hearing a petition filed by Akhil Bharatiya Kalyan Ashram, a wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh fighting for the cause of the tribals in India, also issued notice to the Election Commission regarding the restoration of the community's voting rights.

An ethnic violence against the Reang community had driven it out of Mizoram in 1995.

Speaking to rediff.com after the court's directive, Surya Narayan Saxena, spokesman of the petitioner organisation, said over 2,000 Reang tribals living in six camps in Tripura's Kanchanpura district have died in the last couple of years due to an outbreak of cholera and other diseases. No medical facility was being provided in these camps, he said.

"We are asking for the restoration of the voting rights of the Reang tribals whose names were struck from the electoral roll during the revision in 2000, and all the records that could establish that the 20,000 Reangs had voting rights prior to being driven out of the state were deliberately destroyed in fire," he said.

According to Saxena, 33,000 Reang tribals still live in camps in Tripura. Another 17,000 have migrated to Myanmar, Assam and other neighbouring states to start a fresh life, he added.