9 lives and counting: Nitish Kumar's chief ministerial run in Bihar

November 19, 2025

9 lives and counting: Nitish Kumar's chief ministerial run in Bihar | India News

Conventionally, Nitish Kumar, given the years he has spent as CM, should have taken oath only five times, not nine.

Nitish Kumar has been elected as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar and will take oath as chief minister in Patna today. This is the tenth time he will be administered the chief ministerial oath in the state, the highest for any chief minister ever in India.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar making an addres during JDU Legislature Party meeting in Patna on Wednesday(Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times)
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar making an addres during JDU Legislature Party meeting in Patna on Wednesday(Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times)

Conventionally, Kumar, given the years he has spent as CM, should have taken oath only five times, not nine -- that would have put him in a club of 14 other such chief ministers in India -- but his politics has been far from conventional. Follow Bihar CM oath-taking ceremony LIVE updates

Kumar's first term as chief minister lasted just seven days in 2000 when his government had to resign after failing to muster a majority. He took oath for the second and third time after the October 2005 and 2010 assembly elections, when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won a majority in Bihar. However, he quit as the chief minister after the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U)'s loss in the 2014 elections, which it contested without the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and made Jitan Ram Manjhi, then a part of the JD(U), the chief minister.

But Nitish took charge once again in 2015 before the assembly elections, making it his fourth instance of being administered the oath of chief minister's office. Nitish was sworn as the chief minister after the 2015 and 2020 elections as well, once as the leader of the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance (in 2015) and once as leader of the NDA (in 2020). But he added three more oath takings to his tally by switching sides to the NDA in 2017 and deserting to NDA to join RJD in 2022 and then coming back again in 2024.

To be sure, Nitish is not the longest serving chief minister in the country by some distance. He has spent 7023 days as a chief minister in HT's chief ministers' database and is ranked eighth currently.

If he were to complete his full term (1845 days) as chief minister this time, he would become the third longest serving chief minister in the history of the country with Pawan Kumar Chamling (Sikkim) and Naveen Patnaik (Odisha) being the only two ahead of him.

Nitish Kumar is also on the leaderboard as far as chief ministers are concerned on another count: he has seen 14 governors while in the chief minister's office, making him the third in the list of chief ministers who have seen the most governors in their term behind Lal Thanhawla (Mizoram) and Virbhadra Singh (Himachal Pradesh).

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Jonas Archer

9 lives and counting: Nitish Kumar's chief ministerial run in Bihar | India News

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