List of prime ministers of India

The Prime Minister of India is the chief executive of the Government of India. In India’s parliamentary system, the Constitution names the President as head of state de jure, but his or her de facto executive powers are vested in the prime minister and their Council of Ministers. Appointed and sworn-in by the President, the prime minister is usually the leader of the party or alliance that has a majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament of India.

Since 1947 India has had 14 prime ministers, 15 including Gulzarilal Nanda who twice acted in the role, of which 6 having at least one full term, ruling country for about 60 years. The first was Jawaharlal Nehru of the Indian National Congress party, who was sworn in on 15 August 1947, when India gained independence from the British Raj. Serving until his death in May 1964, Nehru remains India’s longest-serving prime minister. He was succeeded by fellow Congressman Lal Bahadur Shastri, whose 1 year 7-month term also ended in death. Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, succeeded Shastri in 1966 to become the country’s first woman prime minister. Eleven years later, she was voted out of power in favour of the Janata Party, whose leader Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress prime minister. After he resigned in 1979, his former deputy Charan Singh briefly held office until Indira Gandhi was voted back six months later. Her second stint as prime minister ended five years later on 31 October 1984, when she was assassinated by her own bodyguards. Her son Rajiv Gandhi was then sworn in as India’s youngest premier and the third from his family. Members of Nehru–Gandhi family have been prime minister for a total of 37 years and 303 days.

Rajiv’s five-year term ended with his former cabinet colleague, Vishwanath Pratap Singh of the Janata Dal, forming the year-long National Front coalition government in 1989. A seven-month interlude under prime minister Chandra Shekhar followed, after which the Congress party returned to power, forming the government under P. V. Narasimha Rao in June 1991. Rao’s five-year term was succeeded by four short-lived governments—Atal Bihari Vajpayee from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for 13 days in 1996, a year each under United Front prime ministers H. D. Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral, and Vajpayee again for 19 months in 1998–99.After Vajpayee was sworn-in for the third time, in 1999, he managed to lead his National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to a full five-year term, the first non-Congress alliance to do so. Vajpayee was succeeded by Manmohan Singh, whose United Progressive Alliance government was in office for 10 years between 2004 and 2014. The incumbent prime minister of India is Narendra Modi who has headed the BJP-led NDA government since 26 May 2014, is India’s first non-Congress single party majority government. In August 2020, Modi became India’s longest serving non-Congress Prime Minister.

List

Legend

•   Acting prime minister

BJP (2)   INC/INC(I)/INC(R) (6+1 acting)   JD (3)   JP (1)   JP(S) (1)   SJP(R) (1)
No.	Portrait	Name(Birth–Death)		Constituency	Party (Alliance)	Term of office			Lok Sabha	Ministry	Appointed by
1		Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964)		Phulpur, Uttar Pradesh	Indian National Congress	15 August 1947	15 April 1952	16 years, 286 days	Constituent Assembly	Nehru I	The Earl Mountbatten of Burma
						15 April 1952	17 April 1957		1st	Nehru II	Rajendra Prasad
						17 April 1957	2 April 1962		2nd	Nehru III
						2 April 1962	27 May 1964†		3rd	Nehru IV
Acting		Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998)		Sabarkantha, Gujarat	Indian National Congress	27 May 1964	9 June 1964	13 days		Nanda I	Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
2		Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966)		Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh	Indian National Congress	9 June 1964	11 January 1966†	1 year, 216 days		Shastri
Acting		Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998)		Sabarkantha, Gujarat	Indian National Congress	11 January 1966	24 January 1966	13 days		Nanda II
3		Indira Gandhi (1917–1984)		Rajya Sabha MPfor Uttar Pradesh	Indian National Congress	24 January 1966	4 March 1967	11 years, 59 days		Indira I
				Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh	Indian National Congress (R)	4 March 1967	15 March 1971		4th
						15 March 1971	24 March 1977		5th	Indira II	V. V. Giri
4		Morarji Ranchhodji Desai (1896–1995)		Surat, Gujarat	Janata Party	24 March 1977	28 July 1979	2 years, 126 days	6th	Desai	B. D. Jatti (acting)
5		Chaudhary Charan Singh (1902–1987)		Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh	Janata Party (Secular)	28 July 1979	14 January 1980	170 days		Charan	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
(3)		Indira Gandhi (1917–1984)		Medak, Andhra Pradesh	Indian National Congress (I)	14 January 1980	31 October 1984†	4 years, 291 days	7th	Indira III
6		Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991)		Amethi, Uttar Pradesh	Indian National Congress (I)	31 October 1984	31 December 1984	5 years, 32 days		Rajiv	Zail Singh
						31 December 1984	2 December 1989		8th
7		Vishwanath Pratap Singh (1931–2008)		Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh	Janata Dal (National Front)	2 December 1989	10 November 1990	343 days	9th	Vishwanath	R. Venkataraman
8		Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007)		Ballia, Uttar Pradesh	Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) with INC(I)	10 November 1990	21 June 1991	223 days		Chandra Shekhar
9		Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (1921–2004)		Nandyal, Andhra Pradesh	Indian National Congress (I)	21 June 1991	16 May 1996	4 years, 330 days	10th	Rao
10		Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018)		Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh	Bharatiya Janata Party	16 May 1996	1 June 1996	16 days	11th	Vajpayee I	Shankar Dayal Sharma
11		Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda (1933–)		Rajya Sabha MPfor Karnataka	Janata Dal (United Front)	1 June 1996	21 April 1997	324 days		Deve Gowda
12		Inder Kumar Gujral (1919–2012)		Rajya Sabha MPfor Bihar	Janata Dal (United Front)	21 April 1997	19 March 1998	332 days		Gujral
(10)		Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018)		Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh	Bharatiya Janata Party (NDA)	19 March 1998	10 October 1999	6 years, 64 days	12th	Vajpayee II	K. R. Narayanan
						10 October 1999	22 May 2004		13th	Vajpayee III
13		Manmohan Singh (1932–)		Rajya Sabha MPfor Assam	Indian National Congress (UPA)	22 May 2004	22 May 2009	10 years, 4 days	14th	Manmohan I	A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
						22 May 2009	26 May 2014		15th	Manmohan II	Pratibha Patil
14		Narendra Damodardas Modi (1950–)		Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh	Bharatiya Janata Party (NDA)	26 May 2014	30 May 2019	6 years, 316 days	16th	Modi I	Pranab Mukherjee
						30 May 2019	Incumbent		17th	Modi II	Ram Nath Kovind
No.	Portrait	Name(Birth–Death)		Constituency	Party (Alliance)	Term of office			Lok Sabha	Ministry	Appointed by

Statistics

List of prime ministers by length of term

No.	Name	Party	Length of term
			Longest continuous term	Total years of premiership
1	Jawaharlal Nehru	INC	16 years, 286 days	16 years, 286 days
2	Indira Gandhi	INC/INC(I)/INC(R)	11 years, 59 days	15 years, 350 days
3	Manmohan Singh	INC	10 years, 4 days	10 years, 4 days
4	Narendra Modi	BJP	6 years, 316 days	6 years, 316 days
5	Atal Bihari Vajpayee	BJP	6 years, 64 days	6 years, 80 days
6	Rajiv Gandhi	INC(I)	5 years, 32 days	5 years, 32 days
7	P. V. Narasimha Rao	INC(I)	4 years, 330 days	4 years, 330 days
8	Morarji Desai	JP	2 years, 126 days	2 years, 126 days
9	Lal Bahadur Shastri	INC	1 year, 216 days	1 year, 216 days
10	Vishwanath Pratap Singh	JD	343 days	343 days
11	Inder Kumar Gujral	JD	332 days	332 days
12	H. D. Deve Gowda	JD	324 days	324 days
13	Chandra Shekhar	SJP(R)	223 days	223 days
14	Charan Singh	JP(S)	170 days	170 days
Acting	Gulzarilal Nanda	INC	13 days	26 days

Timeline

List by party

Political parties by total timespan of their member holding PMO (1 April 2021)

No.	Political party	Number of Prime ministers	Total years of holding PMO
1	INC/INC(I)/INC(R)	6+1 acting	54 years, 123 days
2	BJP	2	13 years, 25 days
3	JD	3	2 years, 269 days
4	JP	1	2 years, 126 days
5	SJP(R)	1	223 days
6	JP(S)	1	170 days

Parties by total duration (in years) of holding Prime Minister’s Office

Living former Prime ministers

As of 7 April 2021, there are two living former Prime ministers of India:

• Living former Prime ministers
• 

  H. D. Deve Gowda(1996–1997)
  May 18, 1933 (age 87)

• 

  Manmohan Singh
  (2004–2014)
  September 26, 1932(age 88)

The most recent death of a former Prime Minister was that of Atal Bihari Vajpayee on 16 August 2018, aged 93.