CDS (II) 2024 GK Q116: Which of the following State/s is/are common to Bru-Reang

Q: What is the answer to CDS (II) 2024 GK Q116?

A. Correct — A, Tripura. Take the three settlements one at a time. The memorandum with the National Liberation Front of Tripura, Sabir Debbarma faction, signed on 10 August 2019, was between the Government of India, the Government of Tripura and the outfit, and brought its cadres out of the insurgency. The Bru-Reang agreement of 16 January 2020 was wider — a quadripartite settlement among the Centre, the Governments of Tripura and Mizoram and Bru representatives, which ended more than two decades of displacement by settling about 34,000 Bru permanently in Tripura rather than returning them to Mizoram. The tripartite agreement with TIPRA in March 2024 was again between the Government of India, the Government of Tripura and the party, on the aspirations of the State's tribal population. Mizoram is a party to only one of the three, and Manipur and Assam to none, so the single State common to all of them is Tripura. (Provisional — pending the official UPSC key.)

CDS (II) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 116 of 120

Question text verified against the official CDS question paper.

Provisional answers. UPSC has not yet released the official CDS 2024 answer key (it is published several months after the exam). The answers here are our best-supported answers — derived from careful subject-solving and cross-checked against independent solved papers and primary sources — and will be reconciled to the official key as soon as UPSC publishes it. They are not the official UPSC answer key.

Disputed answer. Reputable sources differ on this question. We show the answer our analysis best supports and explain the disagreement below; treat it with extra caution until the official UPSC key settles it.

Which of the following State/s is/are common to Bru-Reang Agreement, NLFT (SD) Agreement and Tripartite Agreement with TIPRA?

(a)Tripura
(b)Assam and Tripura
(c)Tripura and Mizoram
(d)Manipur and Mizoram

Answer

Why

Correct — A, Tripura. Take the three settlements one at a time. The memorandum with the National Liberation Front of Tripura, Sabir Debbarma faction, signed on 10 August 2019, was between the Government of India, the Government of Tripura and the outfit, and brought its cadres out of the insurgency. The Bru-Reang agreement of 16 January 2020 was wider — a quadripartite settlement among the Centre, the Governments of Tripura and Mizoram and Bru representatives, which ended more than two decades of displacement by settling about 34,000 Bru permanently in Tripura rather than returning them to Mizoram. The tripartite agreement with TIPRA in March 2024 was again between the Government of India, the Government of Tripura and the party, on the aspirations of the State's tribal population. Mizoram is a party to only one of the three, and Manipur and Assam to none, so the single State common to all of them is Tripura.

Why the others are wrong

(b)Assam and Tripura — Assam is not a party to any of the three. It has its own set of accords, including the Bodo agreement of 2020 and the Karbi Anglong agreement of 2021.
(c)Tripura and Mizoram — Correct for the Bru-Reang agreement alone. Mizoram is not a party to the NLFT settlement or to the TIPRA agreement, so it is not common to all three.
(d)Manipur and Mizoram — Manipur is a party to none of the three, and Mizoram only to one, so this pair is common to nothing in the list.

Concept

The Ministry of Home Affairs has settled a long series of north-eastern insurgencies through negotiated agreements, each signed by the Centre, the State or States concerned and the group in question. Tripura's line runs from the surrender agreements with the National Liberation Front of Tripura factions, through the Bru-Reang settlement of the displacement caused by the 1997 Mizoram violence, to the 2024 agreement with TIPRA on tribal aspirations and a further accord later that year with the remaining NLFT faction and the All Tripura Tiger Force.

The question is a set-intersection problem, and the discipline is to list the parties to each agreement before comparing. That method also protects against the pull of the Bru-Reang agreement, which is the best remembered of the three precisely because it involves two States — but a State that appears in one agreement is not thereby common to all. The other useful anchor is that all three of these are Tripura settlements by subject matter: the NLFT is a Tripura outfit, TIPRA is a Tripura party, and the Bru were resettled in Tripura. Worth flagging: UPSC has not released a key for this paper, and some answer keys in circulation mark (d). Neither of the States named there is a party to all three settlements, so this card takes (a).

Key facts

NLFT (SD) memorandum, 10 August 2019: Government of India, Government of Tripura and the NLFT-SD faction.
Bru-Reang agreement, 16 January 2020: a quadripartite settlement among the Centre, Tripura, Mizoram and Bru representatives, resettling about 34,000 Bru permanently in Tripura.
Tripartite agreement with TIPRA, March 2024: Government of India, Government of Tripura and TIPRA.
The Bru, also called Reang, were displaced from Mizoram in 1997 and lived for over two decades in relief camps in North Tripura.

Study next

Peace accords in the north-east — Bodo, Karbi Anglong, Bru-Reang and the Tripura settlementsInternal displacement in India and the resettlement of the BruSixth Schedule autonomous district councils, including the Tripura Tribal Areas councilArmed Forces (Special Powers) Act and its progressive withdrawal in the north-eastInner Line Permit States and the regulation of entry

Common traps

Assuming Mizoram must be common to all three because it appears in the best-known of them.
Confusing the Bru-Reang agreement with the Bodo agreement of 2020, which concerns Assam.
Reading TIPRA as a north-eastern State rather than as a political party in Tripura.

As a which-State-is-common item across named accords, or as a match between accords and the States that signed them.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Bru-Reang agreement of January 2020 provided for the permanent settlement of displaced Bru families in
- (a)Mizoram
- (b)Tripura
- (c)Assam
- (d)Meghalaya
Answer(b) Tripura — about 34,000 Bru displaced from Mizoram in 1997 were settled permanently in Tripura instead of being repatriated.
practice — not a real PYQ
The Bodo agreement signed in January 2020 concerns which State?
- (a)Assam
- (b)Tripura
- (c)Nagaland
- (d)Manipur
Answer(a) Assam — it dealt with the Bodoland Territorial Region and the surrender of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland factions.