List of Longest Serving Chief Ministers of India

Longest serving Chief Minister of India

Longest-serving Chief Minister of India: Pawan Kumar Chamling is one of the longest-serving chief ministers of India along with Jyoti Basu. Pawan Kumar Chamling was the Chief Minister of Sikkim from 12 December 1994 and has been serving since then.

Pawan Kumar Chamling has served for five successive terms since 1994 and has served as the Longest serving Chief Minister of Sikkim for 24 years, 205 days. Jyoti Basu served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000. He has served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal for 23 years, and 137 days.

List of Longest serving Chief Ministers of India

About the Longest Serving Chief Ministers of India

Pawan Kumar Chamling

Pawan Kumar Chamling is the longest-serving chief minister of any state in India. He has served as the Chief Minister of Sikkim for 24 years, and 165 days. He belonged to the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) party. He was born on 22 September 1949. He was also the Founding President of the Sikkim Democratic Front. He served as the Chief Minister of Sikkim from 1985 to 2019.

Jyoti Basu

Jyoti Basu served as the longest-serving chief minister of West Bengal. He belonged to the Communist Party of India. He was born on 8th July 1914, he was an Indian Marxist theorist, Communist activist, and politician. He was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India. He was also a member of the West Bengal Legislative assembly 11 times.

Gegong Apang

Gegong Apang is an Indian politician from Arunachal Pradesh. He served as Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh from 18 January 1980 to 19 January 1999 and again from August 2003 to April 2007. Apang is the longest-serving Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh and also the third longest-serving head of government of an Indian state after Pawan Kumar Chamling of Sikkim and Jyoti Basu of West Bengal as of 2019.

Lal Thanhawla

Lal Thanhawla was born on 19 May 1938. He is an Indian politician and former Chief Minister of Mizoram, belonging to the Indian National Congress party. He holds the record for the longest-serving Chief Minister of Mizoram, occupying the position for five terms.

He served from 1984 to 1986, 1989 to 1993, 1993 to 1998, 2008 to 2013, and 2013 to 2018. He also served as President of the Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee from 1973 to 2021.

Virbhadra Singh

Virbhadra Singh was an Indian politician who served 6 terms and 21 years as the 4th Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh. He was a leader of the Indian National Congress party; he was elected 9 times as a Member of the Legislative Assembly to the Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha and 5 times as a Member of Parliament to the Lok Sabha.

Virbhadra Singh was popularly known by the honorific Raja Sahib. He holds the distinction of being the longest-serving Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, holding the office from 1983 to 1990, from 1993 to 1998, from 2003 to 2007, and finally from 2012 to 2017, when he was succeeded by the BJP’s Jai Ram Thakur.

Manik Sarkar

Manik Sarkar is an Indian communist politician who served as the Chief Minister of Tripura from March 1998 to March 2018. He is a Politburo Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In March 2008, he was sworn in as leader of Left Front, the Tripura coalition government. In assembly elections held in 2013, he became the chief minister for the fourth consecutive time.

Naveen Patnaik

Naveen Patnaik is an Indian politician serving as the current and 14th Chief Minister of Odisha. He is also the president of the Biju Janata Dal, and a writer who has authored three books. He is the longest-serving chief minister of Odisha and as of 2022, one of the longest-serving chief ministers of any Indian state, holding the post for over two decades, and only the third Indian chief Minister after Pawan Chamling and Jyoti Basu to win five consecutive terms as Chief Minister of an Indian state.

M. Karunanidhi

Muthuvel Karunanidhi was an Indian writer and politician who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for almost two decades over five terms between 1969 and 2011. He was popularly referred to as Kalaignar (Artist) and Mutthamizh Arignar (Tamil Scholar) for his contributions to Tamil literature.

He had the longest tenure as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu with 6,863 days in office. He was also a long-standing leader of the Dravidian movement and ten-time president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam political party. Karunanidhi has the record of never losing an election to the Tamil Nadu Assembly, having won 13 times since his first victory in 1957.

Yashwant Singh Parmar

Yashwant Singh Parmar was an Indian politician. He was a leader of the Indian National Congress and the first Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh state. Upon the formation of the constituent assembly of India in 1946, he represented Himachal Pradesh in the constituent assembly. He served as the longest-serving Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh for 18 years.

Parkash Singh Badal

Parkash Singh Badal is an Indian politician who was Chief Minister of Punjab state from 1970 to 1971, from 1977 to 1980, from 1997 to 2002, and from 2007 to 2017. He is also the patron of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a Sikh-centered regional political party. He was the president of the party from 1995 to 2008, when he was replaced by his son Sukhbir Singh Badal.

Mohan Lal Sukhadia

Mohan Lal Sukhadia was an Indian politician, who served as the Chief Minister of Rajasthan state for 17 years (1954–1971). He became chief minister at the age of 38 and was responsible for bringing major reforms and developments in Rajasthan. For this, he is still widely revered as the “founder of modern Rajasthan”. Later in his career, Sukhadia also served as the Governor of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.

Pratapsingh Rane

Pratapsingh Raoji Rane is an Indian politician from the state of Goa. He has served as the Chief Minister of Goa a record six times and was also the former Leader of the Opposition in the Goa Legislative Assembly. He has been a Member of the Legislative Assembly, Goa for over 50 years.

S.C. Jamir

Senayangba Chubatoshi Jamir is an Indian politician and former Governor of Odisha. He was Parliamentary Secretary to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Deputy Minister under Indira Gandhi. He has served as the Chief Minister of Nagaland, Governor of Maharashtra, Governor of Gujarat & Governor of Goa. He was awarded the third-highest Civilian Award in India, Padma Bhusan in 2020 for his work in public affairs.

Sheila Dikshit

Sheila Dikshit was an Indian politician. The longest-serving Chief Minister of Delhi, as well as the longest-serving female chief minister of any Indian state, she served for 15 years beginning in 1998. Dikshit led the Congress party to three consecutive electoral victories in Delhi.

Okram Ibobi Singh

Okram Ibobi Singh is an Indian Politician who was the Chief Minister of Manipur from 2002 to 2017. In 2012, he helped his party win the state election for the third time with an absolute majority securing 42 out of the total 60 assembly seats, brushing aside the anti-incumbency factor once again. He is a member of the Indian National Congress. In the 2017 Assembly Elections, Okram Ibobi Singh defeated Leitanthem Basanta Singh and Irom Sharmila.

Tarun Gogoi

Tarun Gogoi was an Indian politician who served as the Chief Minister of Assam from 2001 to 2016. He was a member of the Indian National Congress and led the party to a record three consecutive electoral victories and was the longest-serving chief minister of the state. During his tenure as the chief minister, he is credited with ending militant insurgency and mitigating violence in addition to improving the state’s fiscal condition.

Raman Singh

Raman Singh is an Indian politician and Former Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. Currently, he is the National Vice-President of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He is also an ayurvedic practitioner. He is also the longest-serving CM of Chhattisgarh for 15 years.

Shri Krishna Sinha

Shri Krishna Sinha, also known as Shri Babu, was the first chief minister of the Indian state of Bihar (1946–61). Except for the period of World War II, Sinha was the chief minister of Bihar from the time of the first Congress Ministry in 1937 until he died in 1961. Along with the Desh Ratna Rajendra Prasad and Bihar Vibhuti Anugrah Narayan Sinha (A.N. Sinha), Sinha is regarded among the ‘Architects of Modern Bihar’.

Bidhan Chandra Roy

Bidhan Chandra Roy was an Indian physician, educationist, and statesman who served as Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1948 until he died in 1962. Bidhan Chandra Roy was born on 1 July 1882 to a Bengali Kayastha family in Bankipore in Patna, where his father, Prakash Chandra Roy, was serving as an excise inspector. His mother, Aghorkamini Devi, was religious and a devoted social worker.

J. Jayalalithaa

Jayaram Jayalalithaa was an Indian politician and actress who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for more than fourteen years over six terms between 1991 and 2016. From 9 February 1989 to 5 December 2016, she was the 5th and longest-serving general secretary of the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

N Bahadur Bhandari

Nar Bahadur Bhandari was an Indian politician who served as the chief minister of the state of Sikkim from 1979 to 1994. He was the founding leader of the Sikkim Sangram Parishad. He was the first Indian chief minister of Gorkha origin. He also served as the president of Bharatiya Nepali Bhasha Parisangh until his death. He is popularly known as the architect of modern Sikkim.

Shivaraj Singh Chouhan

Shivraj Singh Chouhan is an Indian politician and member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He is the 17th and current Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, having been elected to the same position 3 times in the past, and a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Madhya Pradesh from Budhni. He previously served as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, between 2005 and 2018, and holds the record as the state’s longest-serving Chief Minister.

Bimala Prasad Chaliha

Bimala Prasad Chaliha was a Leader of the Indian National Congress and a Freedom Fighter who was imprisoned at Jorhat Jail in 1942 for active participation in Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India Movement against the British Government.

He was elected to the post of Chief Minister of Assam for Three Consecutive Terms, once from Badarpur Constituency and twice from Sonari Constituency. He was in office from 28 December 1957 to 6 November 1970. He was awarded Padma Vibhushan in 1971.

Narendra Modi

Narendra Damodardas Modi is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization. He is the longest-serving chief minister of Gujarat.

Nitish Kumar

Nitish Kumar is an Indian politician, who is serving as Chief Minister of Bihar since 22 February 2015, having previously held the office from 2005 to 2014 and for a short period in 2000. He has also served as a Union Minister as a Samata Party member.