It was a quiet Sunday in Mizoram as the state prepared for the counting of votes the next day, with both potential chief ministerial faces spending the day in prayer. While the rest of the country was abuzz with the results of the four other states that had gone to polls with Mizoram last month, it was a day of prayer in the Northeast state. Till Friday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had scheduled the counting of votes in the state for Sunday, but there was widespread opposition to the idea among political parties, civil society groups and the Church, on the grounds that Sunday is dedicated to Church duties in the Christian majority state. Eventually, after months of petitioning by all stakeholders, the ECI notified that counting would be deferred by a day, in line with the sentiment of the people. That meant the Mizos and their political parties managed to assert their distinct identity and culture — which was the flavour of these elections — till the very end of the poll season. Both incumbent Chief Minister Zoramthanga of the Mizo National Front (MNF), and his challenger for the seat Lalduhoma of the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), spent Sunday morning in their respective churches in capital Aizawl. The state is one of the few in the Northeast where the BJP is not yet a major player, even though the ruling MNF is a part of the NDA at the Centre. The MNF will be hoping for a repeat of 2018, when it had won 26 seats of the state's total 40, to snatch power from the Congress. The elections to the Assembly were concluded in a single phase on November 7, the first day of the current electoral cycle, with a voter turnout of 78.40%. Along with the MNF and the Congress, the much-younger Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) is the third node of what is widely expected to be a three-way fight. Led by ex-IPS Lalduhoma, the ZPM emerged as a force in 2018 when it won 8 seats, pushing the Congress with 5 wins to the third spot. It swept the Lunglei municipal polls earlier this year, confirming its rise from strength to strength. In its campaign, the ZPM promised a corruption-free government and uplift of the youth and farmers, while leaning heavily on voter fatigue with both the MNF and Congress, which have alternatively ruled the state for long. In fact, since 1993, the state has seen only two chief ministers — Lal Thanhawla of the Congress and Zoramthanga of the Mizo National Front. In a pre-poll interview to The Indian Express, Lalduhoma said he was confident his party would form the government, that too without outside support, as the party doesn't want “bosses sitting in Delhi” - a jibe at the MNF and its association with the BJP. The ruling MNF again leaned heavily on Mizo nationalism as its poll pitch. It also tried to harness the emotive appeal of the Zoramthanga government sheltering Chin refugees from Myanmar, defying the directives of the Centre, despite being part of the NDA in Delhi, and taking in over 12,000 internally-displaced Kuki-Zomi people from neighbouring Manipur. This has helped Zoramthanga position himself as the leader of the Chin, Kuki-Zomi and Mizo tribes, all of which belong to the same Zo ethnic group. The thrust of the Congress campaign appeared to be a primer for its 2024 Lok Sabha pitch. Arguing that both the MNF and ZPM are regional parties with a tendency to tie up with parties in power at the Centre, Mizoram Congress president Lalsawta warned the Christian-majority population that such parties left them vulnerable, and that the Congress was therefore the safest bet to guard the state’s interests against the BJP’s Hindutva push. “The BJP and its allies have been trying to destroy secularism, and we cannot allow that. We are talking of the BJP nationally, which can try to control the state government through regional parties like the MNF and ZPM, which can be tempted easily by it,” he said. The Congress also stitched together a small ‘Mizoram Secular Alliance’, with two local parties – Mizoram People’s Conference (MPC) and the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP). They extended support to the national party but did not contest in any seat. Lalsawta also underlined Mizoram’s debt – the RBI’s report on the state government’s Budget for 2022-2023 places Mizoram as having the highest debt-to-GDP ratio at 53.1% — and alleged financial mismanagement. A bit player in the state with one MLA, the BJP received a boost when two senior MLAs — sitting Speaker Lalrinliana Sailo and K Beichhua — joined the party from the MNF before the polls. It focused its campaign on allegations of corruption against the incumbent government.
