New Delhi: With the swearing-in of the new government in Mizoram completed this week, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has once again failed to share power in the government of this northeastern state.
This, despite the national party increasing its tally from just one in 2018 to two seats in these elections.
In the 2018 assembly polls, the Mizo National Front (MNF) refused to enter into a pre-poll alliance with the national party, in spite of it being a part of the BJP’s North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA). In addition, after its massive win, it didn’t accommodate the lone MLA who had won the first-ever seat for the BJP in the 40-member Mizoram assembly.
This time, too, another regional entity, the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), didn’t embrace the BJP in its government formation, even though it is understood to be closer to the ruling party at the Centre than that of the MNF.
Soon after the counting trends on December 4 firmed up, state BJP president Vanlalhmuaka told reporters in Aizawl that his party would be a part of the next government. The Wire has also learnt from sources in the ZPM that “some amount of gentle pressure” was put on ZPM’s top leader Lalduhoma to accommodate “at least one BJP MLA” in his cabinet. “However, the ZPM leadership didn’t agree as it is a Christian majority state and not too many voters from the majority Mizo community see BJP devoid of its Hindutva politics. It is the same reason MNF stayed away from the BJP.”
BJP national president J.P. Nadda and others during the release of party manifesto. Photo: Twitter (X)/@BJP4Mizoram
On December 10, upon assuming office, Lalduhoma invoked “God,” saying that his party aims to govern the state with “God’s help”. On his first day at work, he also met with members of the Mizoram Church Leadership Committee alongside his party colleagues. On December 4, after ZPM swept the polls, a service was conducted by the Church at its headquarters.
In the November 7 elections, the BJP had pocketed two seats in the belt dominated by Mara, the state’s second largest community, who, too, belong to the Christian community. A local journalist told this correspondent, “The voters saw the BJP beyond Hindutva because the community’s top leaders, who control the Mara Autonomous Council, and thereby have considerable say in an assembly election, have moved to the BJP. But for how long this love affair will continue can’t be said for sure.”
With the Lalduhoma government taking over the state’s administration, Mizoram has, thus, remained the only state where the ruling party under Modi is not part of a northeastern state government.
Also read: Mizoram Election Results Usher in New Politics and Developmental Challenges
A new chapter
What is significant about these elections is, on December 8, with the swearing-in of the new chief minister, this tiny border state not only formally recorded the blossoming of a new regional entity in ZPM, but also added a new chapter to the Northeast’s protracted sub-nationalist political history.
At 74, Lalduhoma, also the ZPM founder, might seem over-aged to lead a state, but he was the youngest among the Mizo leaders vying for the chief minister’s post in the November 7 elections.
Zoramthanga, whom he unseated in these elections, is 79. Congress’s Lalsawta, who would have become the chief minister, and who helped the grand old party get the numbers on December 4, is 77.
Among the top Mizo leaders, since Mizoram became a state in 1987, only Laldenga’s chief ministerial run was cut short at 63 due to lung cancer. After C. Chhunga, the first chief minister of Mizoram as a Union territory (UT), Laldenga was undoubtedly its tallest leader; the founder of the Mizo National Front (MNF), a signatory to the Mizo Accord of 1986, which brought down the curtain on its insurgency and made the UT India’s 23rd state.
It was the invincible MNF that ZPM had shown the door in a clean sweep in these elections. Since Laldenga’s demise in 1990, MNF had been led by Zoramthanga.
ZPM, an alliance of six regional entities hinged on Mizo sub-nationalism, may have risen to power now. However, in 2018, political observers had already noted its electoral presence. Faced with the anti-incumbency of a two-time Lal Thanhawla-led Congress government, which was then at its peak, both MNF and the BJP attempted to make Mizoram Congress-mukt, akin to other northeastern states. (Thanhawla was cumulatively the longest-serving chief minister of Mizoram.)
ZPM had jumped into the fray, too. However, having born only in 2017, its fundamentals were not in place. It didn’t have a party symbol recognised by the Election Commission. Its candidates in 35 of the 40 constituencies that it contested had to fight as independents. Eight of them, led by Lalduhoma, got elected.
Even though ZPM became the second-largest party, without a party symbol it couldn’t become the largest opposition at that time. In 2018, too, the three-decades-old tradition of the Congress and MNF sharing power in Mizoram alternately may have continued, but the tally indicated an implicit public sanction for a new regional party.
That this indication was seen as a threat by the ruling MNF could be assessed from the fact that Lalduhoma was disqualified from the assembly in 2020 for having moved to ZPM formally, after the Commission recognised it as a political party. His disqualification came because he didn’t resign as an independent before joining ZPM.
For Laldhuhoma, an IPS officer of 1974 batch, it was, however, a second disqualification under the anti-defection law.
Interestingly, if a state satrap like Zoramthanga saw in him a political threat, precipitating his disqualification on technical grounds, he was also thrown out of parliament back in 1988 after resigning from the Congress, following a power tussle with another satrap, Lal Thanhawla. Lalduhoma thus became the first Lok Sabha MP to be disqualified under that law.
Lalduhoma’s entry into politics
Lalduhoma’s entry into politics from bureaucracy was due to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; she noticed him when he was in charge of her security. Her government utilised him in the Mizo peace process with Laldenga.
However, that lateral entry from New Delhi into Mizo affairs was not taken lightly by chief minister Lal Thanhawla. He was sidelined in the state Congress, ultimately leading to his exit.
A regionalist at heart, Lalduhoma went on to form a new party, Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP); became a ZNP MLA, too, but failed to grow it as a power to reckon, till it consolidated itself into ZPM. After 25 years of waiting, he finally became an alternative to the MNF and Congress.
Soon after ZPM’s win, he reiterated his commitment to the unification of the Zo-Kuki-dominated areas of Manipur into Mizoram, a demand that Laldenga had raised with the Rajiv Gandhi government but failed due to the Centre’s unwillingness to balkanize Manipur.
Though the Lalduhoma government is keeping a distance from the BJP at the moment, most likely due to the pressure from the Church which has a considerable say in the state’s politics, since 2018 though, he is widely known in the political circles of the state to have maintained good relations with the BJP.
In the times to come, it remains to be seen whether that closeness of the ZPM’s top leader with the BJP can also convince the Narendra Modi government to help deliver that tall Zo-unification promise which Laldenga couldn’t deliver.
