Civic Poll Jolt For Mizoram Congress

By Santanu Ghosh

Mizoram, Nov 7 : The dismal show by the ruling Congress and its ally, the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP), in the first 19 wards of Aizawl municipal council poll has come as a big jolt to the party. The Congress had secured 32 of the 40 seats in the 2008 Mizoram Assembly election.

In 2008, the party’s performance was spectacular in Aizawl where of the 11 Assembly seats it had bagged eight, marking the newly found popularity of the party, with a traditional rural base, in the urban segments.

The crucial Aizawl election on Thursday, with a voter count of 1,68,649, however, did not go too well for the ruling alliance.

The Congress-ZNP combine has shared the spoils with five seats each in the 19-seat council, managing a slender lead of only a seat over their joint adversaries, the Mizo National Front (MNF), and Mizoram People’s Conference (MPC), which together won nine seats.

While the MNF won five seats, its ally, the MPC, formed by the former chief minister Brig. (retd) T. Sailo, ended up capturing four.

One of the Congress stalwarts in the state, R. Laldanglova, elder brother of the state’s home minister R. Lalzirliana, was defeated in ward 8.

Assessing his party’s poor performance, the Congress vice-president in the state, Hiphei, today admitted that given its commanding show in the last Assembly polls, the party is shocked with the municipal election results that were declared yesterday.

He said the Congress this time had great expectations from the municipal poll verdict, as its role in the turnaround of the limping economy of the backward state of Mizoram was yielding results in the entire state.

Hiphei, a former minister and a veteran Congressman, however, made a blunt admission that Aizawl was never an ideal hunting ground for the party, and the party’s victory in the Assembly election in 2008 was a windfall as the then ruling party MNF has “mismanaged” the economy of the state by allegedly squandering its resources.