SANN News
Nitish Kumar has taken oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the 10th time.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP President JP Nadda, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Dharmendra Pradhan, along with Chief Ministers of at least seven states, are present at the swearing-in ceremony held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna. Indian newspapers have reported that 18 ministers, including two deputy chief ministers, will also be sworn in at the ceremony. The oath-taking ceremony began at 11:30 am.
74-year-old Nitish Kumar has become the Chief Minister for the 10th time after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal United secured a two-thirds majority in the last Bihar assembly elections.
Since 2005, Nitish Kumar has taken oath as Chief Minister three times at Gandhi Maidan. This time, he assumed office from the same place for the fourth time. Nitish Kumar first became the Chief Minister in 2000. At that time, his government collapsed in seven days after failing to secure a majority.
He took oath as Chief Minister for the second and third time in the 2005 and 2010 assembly elections after the NDA won the majority. But in 2014, he contested the elections without an alliance with the BJP and the Rashtriya Janata Dal and performed poorly. He then resigned and appointed party leader Jitan Ram Majhi as Chief Minister.
He became Chief Minister again before the 2015 elections. That was his fourth term. He also took oath as Chief Minister after the 2015 and 2020 elections, once as the leader of the Grand Alliance (JDU-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress) and once as the leader of the NDA.
In the meantime, he took oath three more times when he left the Grand Alliance and returned to the NDA in 2017, when he left the NDA and joined the Rastriya Janata Dal in 2022, and when he left the Rastriya Janata Dal and returned to the NDA in 2024.
According to the Indian newspaper ‘Hindustan Times’, Nitish has spent 7023 days (about 19 years) as the Chief Minister so far. He is ranked eighth in the list of all Chief Ministers in the country in terms of serving the longest.
If he completes his five-year term this time, he will become the third longest-serving Chief Minister in the history of India. Before him, Pawan Kumar Chamling of Sikkim and Naveen Patnaik of Odisha had become the longest-serving Chief Ministers.
Nitish has set another unique record. During his tenure as Chief Minister, he has worked with 14 Governors. In this, he is ranked third among the Chief Ministers of India. In this list, Lal Thanhawla of Mizoram and Virbhadra Singh of Himachal Pradesh are ranked first and second respectively.
