Guwahati, Aug. 20 -- Sixty years after he graduated, former Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga on Thursday finally received the degree certificate he thought he might never see - a document held by Gauhati University since 1966, through his two decades underground as a Mizo insurgent and decades in active politics.

The 82-year-old, who has donned the CM's chair three times since 1998, had passed his BA exam with a major in English in 1966 from Dhanamanjuri College in Manipur's Imphal, which was at that time affiliated with Gauhati University.

However, with the armed Mizo Uprising against the Indian state starting the same year, Zoramthanga, who had joined the MNF a year earlier in 1965, joined the insurgency led by Laldenga and remained...