Mizoram: Mizoram’s man of the moment was on Indira’s security detail | India News

Long before “Who is Lalduhoma?” showed up on search engines, the now 74-year-old former IPS officer of the 1977 batch was already a household name in his native Mizoram. Those outside the state who had heard the name before would have remembered him as the country’s first MP to be disqualified under the anti-defection law, and then again as an MLA.
On Monday, as he stood at the cusp of causing the biggest upheaval in the Christian-majorityNorth-Eastern state’s politics, Lalduhoma had the air of someone who knew his time to be known for the right reasons would come.Just that not many would have seen it coming, least of all the man he unseated from the chief ministership: incumbent Zoramthanga.
Born in Tualpui village of Champhai district, bordering Myanmar, education was Lalduhoma’s escape from poverty. He excelled in academics, catching the eye of the then Union Territory’s first CM, C Chhunga, who gave him a job as principal assistant in his office in 1972.
Lalduhoma simultaneously enrolled for an evening course at Gauhati University, graduating with distinction and going on to clear the civil services exam five years later. As an IPS officer posted in Goa, he was ruthless against the drug mafia, building a reputation strong enough to impress then PM Indira Gandhi into getting him transferred to New Delhi in 1982 and later making him a part of her security detail.
At Indira’s behest, Lalduhoma helped bring insurgent leader Laldenga’s Mizo National Front (MNF) to the negotiating table. In 1984, he quit his job, joined Congress and was elected MP from Mizoram. He would resign from the party four years later, inviting disqualification as an MP.