Guwahati: A former IPS officer Lalduhoma is all set to be the next chief minister of Mizoram with his party Zoram People’s Movement sweeping the assembly polls. He won his election from the constituency of Sercchip by 2,982 votes.
Mr Lalduhoma’s Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), a new regional party that contested the Assembly polls as a recognised party for the first time, got a stunning victory against the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) in the counting of votes on Monday.
By sweeping the polls, the ZPM has also broken the Congress-MNF duopoly in the state and it will be the first time that a party other than the Congress or the MNF has been voted to power since the state’s formation in 1987. With power having constantly swung between the two parties, the chief ministership alternated between Congress’s Mr Lalthanhawla and MNF’s Mr Zoramthanga since 1993.
After completing his BA degree from the North East Hill University, Mr Lalduhoma joined the Indian Police Service.
Mr Lalduhoma initially served in the coastal state of Goa. While in service, he became the security in-charge for then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He resigned from the service in 1984 and joined the Congress, getting elected to the Lok Sabha later that year. In 1988, he ended up becoming the first MP to be disqualified under the anti-defection law after he resigned from the Congress. Before the formation of the ZPM, he had been elected as MLA in 2003 from another party he had founded, the Zoram Nationalist Party.
The ZPM started as a common platform of six smaller regional parties and civil society groups in 2017. It was not a recognised party yet during the Assembly elections in 2018. Instead, there were 38 Independent candidates backed by the platform, of whom eight went on to become MLAs. This made it the second-largest party in the Assembly. In 2019, the ZPM was recognised as a party.
The ZPM made its presence felt Mr with Lalduhoma’s victory in the Serchhip by-election in 2021 which had to be held after his disqualification from the Assembly for “defecting” to the ZPM after being elected as an Independent.
In the run-up to the elections, the ZPM and Mr Lalduhoma largely campaigned and harped on decades of anti-incumbency against both the Congress and the MNF. They accused the MNF of having lost its regional character by being a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Like the MNF, the ZPM also emphasises Mizo identity.
