From Fighting For Mizo Nation To Chief Ministership, Zoramthanga's Long Journey

Long before he joined politics, Zoramthanga was a fighter of a Mizo insurgent group that declared independence from India in 1966.

The Chief Minister of Mizoram, eight months short of turning 80, also heads the Mizo National Front, or MNF, the same organisation he joined in 1965 in his last year of college.

The MNF, founded by Laldenga, waged a two-decade-long guerilla war against India for independence for a sovereign Mizo nation.

Zoramthanga remained an active insurgent of the MNF until the centre and the MNF signed a peace agreement in 1986.

The then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and MNF founder Laldenga inked the deal that would eventually result in Mizoram becoming a new state in 1987.

The MNF, a newly recognised party then, fought the assembly election the same year and won. Laldenga became the Chief Minister and Zoramthanga, who won from Champhai constituency, became a minister in the state cabinet. It would be 11 more years before Zoramthanga took the top post in Mizoram.

He became the chief of the MNF after Laldenga died in 1990; the party lost the 1993 assembly election to the Congress, but Zoramthanga won from Champhai seat and became the Leader of Opposition in the assembly.

Zoramthanga became the Chief Minister for the first time in 1998 after the MNF won the state election. Since then, the Congress and the MNF have been in power on and off in Mizoram.

At 79, Zoramthanga still leads the MNF, and he has shown no indication he would slow down. The MNF is a member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the centre. But in the state, Zoramthanga's style of politics has no soft spot for the BJP or Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Zoramthanga last month said he wouldn't share the stage if PM Modi came to Mizoram to campaign for the assembly election to be held on November 7. The Mizoram Chief Minister has been upset with the ethnic violence in Manipur, which he claimed has inflicted more casualties on the Chin-Kuki-Zo tribes than on the Meitei community.

"The people of Mizoram are all Christians. When the people of Manipur burned hundreds of churches in Manipur, they (Mizos) were totally against that kind of idea. To have sympathy with the BJP at this time will be a big minus point for my party," Zoramthanga told BBC News in an interview.

Under Zoramthanga, Mizoram has taken in over 40,000 refugees who fled from the junta rule in Myanmar, citing kinship and familial ties with the Chin people in the neighbouring country.

He expects to win support of the Mizos with this humanitarian gesture in an election year. Even then, his rivals in the regional political party Zoram People's Movement (ZPM) have said Zoramthanga's policy of helping Myanmar refugees is only optics for his political survival.

ZPM leader and the party's chief ministerial candidate Lalduhoma has said Zoramthanga's MNF, which is an ally of the BJP, has not done enough to address the concerns of Kuki-Zo tribes in BJP-ruled Manipur.

The MNF's passive-aggressive association with the BJP is likely to have a strong effect on Zoramthanga's chances in the coming election, Lalduhoma said. He claimed that unlike Zoramthanga's MNF, his party will give better treatment to the Zo people who fled from Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Manipur.

Mizoram's politics at the moment amid the ethnic violence in Manipur, hence, appears to be dwelling on kinship sentiments as leaders race to claim who will treat refugees better.

But Zoramthanga also faces dormant concerns among Mizos who worry about pressure on land and resources in the long term due to the MNF's policy on refugees. India is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, 1951, and its 1967 protocol, yet Mizoram has been openly welcoming thousands and thousands of Myanmar refugees.

"The Indian government helped the refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan and even armed them to attain independence. We don't arm the refugees from Myanmar, but we simply provide them food and shelter on humanitarian grounds," Zoramthanga said on October 24.

Mizoram will vote for its 40-member assembly on November 7; votes will be counted on December 3.