 "Lalduhoma")
Lalduhoma, set to be the next chief minister (CM) of Mizoram, is a man of many parts.
According to his profile on the Mizoram Assembly website, the 74-year-old former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, who served in the security detail of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1982, has listed farming as his occupation and “Bachelor of Arts (BA) with distinction” as his educational qualification.
But Lalduhoma, the CM face of his party, the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), is a rare legislator who has been disqualified twice under the anti-defection law. In 1988, he became the first MP ever to be disqualified under the law, which was first enacted in 1985. He was disqualified again in 2020 as a legislator of the Mizoram Assembly, the first such instance in the state.
Lalduhoma, a 1977 batch IPS officer, quit the service to join active politics, losing his Assembly election from Lunglei in the 1984 Assembly polls, but was elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha as the Congress candidate from the Mizoram constituency in the Lok Sabha elections that year. He resigned as state Congress president in 1986 after he was accused of conspiring against then chief minister Lal Thanhawla. He contested the 1987 and 1989 Assembly polls as an Independent against Zoramthanga from Champhai, losing on both occasions.
In 1997, he joined the Zoram Nationalist Party, winning the 2003 polls from Ratu. In 2018, Lalduhoma defeated then CM Lal Thanhawla from Serchhip by 410 votes and won from another seat that he later vacated. Lalduhoma was disqualified in 2020 when 12 legislators of the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) complained that he had defected to the ZPM while he was elected as an Independent. He won the subsequent bypoll from Serchhip in 2021. He was also once part of the MNF. From 1989 to 2018, Lal Thanhawla and Zoramthanga took turns occupying the chief ministerial chair, a nearly three-decade pattern that Lalduhoma is set to break.
