Nagaland lost one of its most outspoken and seasoned legislators on Tuesday afternoon, November 11. Imkong L Imchen, MLA of 28 Koridang Assembly Constituency and Advisor for Information & Public Relations and Soil & Water Conservation, passed away at a private hospital in Guwahati after a brief illness. He was 75.
He was first admitted to a hospital in Kohima on Saturday after experiencing health complications. Following a suspected heart attack, he was airlifted to Guwahati on Monday. Even just days before his passing, Imchen had been seen in public attending a volleyball tournament in Aliba village on November 7, where he reportedly mentioned feeling unwell and left the event early. The previous day, he was in Chungtia village, one of the largest in his constituency what would become his last official visit among the people he served for over two decades.
Imchen’s political journey began in 2003 when he first contested and won as an independent candidate. He would go on to win every election since then — five consecutive victories that made him one of the longest-serving legislators from Mokokchung district.
Over the years, he held eight different portfolios — from Rural Development, Power, School Education, SCERT, Technical Education, Health & Family Welfare, Forest, Environment & Climate Change, to Home leaving an imprint across a wide range of departments.
But beyond the positions he held, Imchen was known for his blunt honesty often unfiltered, sometimes controversial, but always fearless.
“I was the type of person who would ask my assistant for the file if it wasn’t brought to my table,” he once said during an exclusive interview with MT, describing his impatience with bureaucratic delays.
He took pride in being a grassroots politician, one who had started out as a student leader and president of civil society bodies in the late 1970s, long before entering electoral politics. His training in social and cultural anthropology at NEHU, he said, helped him understand society “through empirical study,” shaping his people-first outlook in politics.
A man who refused to be boxed into party lines, Imchen’s political path was as dynamic as his personality. From Congress to Independent, then NPF, and finally the NDPP, his decisions were guided less by calculation and more by conviction.
“I left Congress because they were just making castles in the air,” he once remarked. “I am a grassroot worker and I could not relate with them. I never felt like worshipping AICC office bearers, so I never even went to Delhi.”
In April 2022, he left the NPF, joining the NDPP ahead of the 2023 elections, saying that the NPF’s “working system had become too arrogant” and “its policies were not genuinely concerned for the whole Nagas.”
Through every political shift, Imkong L Imchen remained the same man – outspoken, self-assured, and fiercely protective of his people. His critics often called him unruly; his supporters called him principled. Both, in a way, were right.
In the end, his was a voice that refused to bend one that carried the weight of Mokokchung’s political conscience for over two decades. And even in his final days, he was doing what he always did best: showing up for his people.