New Delhi: With the trends in the counting of votes for the Mizoram assembly elections firming up on Monday, December 4, the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) is poised for a massive victory over its regional rival, the Mizo National Front (MNF).
As per the Election Commission of India’s website, ZPM won 27 seats – comfortably more than the simple majority mark of 21 in the 40-member house.
What has made the ZPM’s victory sweeter is also the party’s candidate Lalthansanga defeating chief minister and MNF supremo Zoramthanga by 2,101 votes in the Aizawl East-1 seat. MNF looks set to win 10 seats and the BJP won 2.
The Congress is set to win only one seat, the Lawngtlai West seat – its worst performance in recent years in the state.
Voting for the elections in the Northeastern state was held in a single phase on November 7. Over 80% of the electorate participated in the ballot that saw 174 candidates in the fray, including 16 women.
Though the ECI had set December 3 as the date for the counting of votes, like in the rest of the four states that voted in November, the poll body had to revise the date to December 4. The poll panel received multiple representations from political parties, the Church and civil society organisations as December 3 was a Sunday, the holy day for Christians, a majority in the state.
While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s win in three North Indian states and the Congress taking Telangana on December 3 has already set the tone in the media for election-related deliberations and stock-taking, the sweep of ZPM in a tiny state like Mizoram is also noteworthy. Here are eight takeaways from today’s Mizoram electoral results.
1. ZPM’s win means Mizoram will get a new face as its chief minister in Lalduhoma. It can also mean 79-year-old Zoramthanga, a stalwart in Mizo politics for over three decades, sailing off into the political sunset. Already, another veteran Mizo politician, former two-time chief minister Lalthanhawla, had announced his retirement from politics after the 2018 loss of his Congress party.
2. Today’s gigantic win by ZPM has also changed the 35-year-old cycle of MNF and Congress sharing power in the border state alternately. After the signing of the Mizo Accord with the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986, the Congress government under Lalthanhawla stepped down from the chief minister’s post to give way to MNF’s Laldenga. Since then, in every assembly poll, the national party has been engaged in a two-corner contest with the MNF until the ZPM arrived on the scene in the 2018 polls, and the BJP upped its game under Narendra Modi.
3. With the MNF failing to repeat its 2018 win in the state, the regional party couldn’t break the cycle in Mizoram of a party failing to return to power for a third consecutive term. It is no cakewalk for any party to sidestep anti-incumbency and return to power for a third term. In the Northeast, only the Congress under the chief ministership of Tarun Gogoi could pull it off in Assam in 2011.
Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga. Photo: X (Twitter) /@ZoramthangaCM
4. The December 4 election results that threw up two wins for the BJP have underlined that its footprint in Mizoram is growing. However, it also holds up that, once again, the national party failed to have an MLA in the state from the majority Mizo community. This was even after the assembly speaker from the MNF, Lalrinliana, had shifted base to the BJP in the run-up to these elections. This makes Mizoram the only state where BJP has failed to enter a north-eastern state’s majority community in spite of being in power in New Delhi. In all, the BJP contested 23 seats. Only five of its candidates were non-Mizos.
5. Today’s verdict has also shown that the BJP’s entry into the state’s Mara community has further firmed up. While the party candidate K. Hrahmo won the Palak seat, K. Beichhua, a former senior minister of the MNF who also recently moved to the BJP, picked up the Siaha seat for the party.
These two wins for the BJP came soon after its sweep of the Mara District Council in Mizoram. In 2017, the Mara Democratic Front merged with the BJP, which gave the national party a much-needed entry into the Mara community, the second most influential community after the Mizos. In 2019, that move helped the BJP grab the Mara District Council. This past April, the BJP swept the Council elections.
6. The BJP losing the Tuichawng constituency suggests that the party’s hold in 2018 over the Chakma community in Mizoram was most likely due to the popularity of its then-candidate Budha Dhan Chakma.
Budha Dhan Chakma, a former minister in the Lalthanhawla government, had moved to the BJP close to the 2018 elections and went on to give the party its first taste of victory in Mizoram’s assembly elections. This time around, Budha Dhan had announced his retirement from politics, leading the BJP to bank on a new candidate, Durjya Dhan Chakma. He lost to MNF’s Rasik Mohan Chakma. Like in the Mara Council, the BJP had also succeeded in capturing the Chakma District Council of Mizoram, a strategy it had adopted some years ago to enter the Mizoram election fray.
However, in the recent polls, today’s winner from the MNF, Rasik Mohan Chakma, became its chief executive member.
7. The MNF’s failure to hold on to power also means that the Mizos did not consider the ethnic strife in Manipur that had affected their kindred community, the Kukis, as an election issue. The voters rather bit into the ZPM’s stand during the campaigning that the Manipur issue is important to all Zo people and their politicians across party lines. Though Zoramthanga had stridently batted for the Kukis, and also for the displaced Chins of Myanmar, and tried tilting it into an election issue, the voters didn’t look at him as the only Mizo leader who can continue that support to their kindred lot.
8. Finally, while ZPM’s win has meant the rise of a new regional party in Mizoram after the MNF, the phenomenon is, but, only a second across the Northeast in recent times. In the last Nagaland elections, one saw a new regional party, the Nationalist Democratic People’s Party (NDPP), seizing power from an already entrenched regional entity, the Naga People’s Front (NPF). Like the MNF, the NPF was also the state’s first regional party to have grabbed power from the Congress in spite of the national party being well entrenched at the Centre and in most of the Northeast. Like the MNF, the NPF was also a BJP ally.
While the NPF, ditto MNF in Mizoram, had resisted sharing power with the BJP in Nagaland, the NDPP’s win in Nagaland made way for the BJP to enter the state government not only for the first time but to also demand plum portfolios like that of the state home ministry.
Today, even as counting was ongoing in Mizoram, the BJP state president Vanlalhmuaka told reporters that his party “will participate in the new government which will be formed soon.” Since the ZPM is seen as close to the BJP, his statement could well be true.
If it does, it could be termed as the BJP’s effective ‘Nagaland model’ for the Christian-majority states in the Northeast.
