Nitish Kumar to Take Oath as Bihar CM for a Record 10th Time

Nitish Kumar has been elected leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar and will take oath as chief minister in Patna today — marking an unprecedented tenth swearing-in, the most by any chief minister in India.

Ordinarily, based on his total years in office, Kumar would have been sworn in only five times, joining a group of 14 former CMs with similar tenure. But his political journey has been anything but conventional, marked by alliances made, broken and remade.

Kumar first became chief minister in 2000, but the government collapsed within seven days after failing to secure a majority. He returned to power after the NDA’s victories in the 2005 and 2010 assembly elections. However, following the JD(U)’s poor performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls — contested without the BJP or RJD — he stepped down and installed party colleague Jitan Ram Manjhi as CM.

Ahead of the 2015 assembly elections, Kumar returned to the top post, adding a fourth oath-taking. He was sworn in again after the 2015 and 2020 elections — first as head of the JD(U)-RJD-Congress coalition, and later as the NDA’s leader.

Kumar increased his tally further through a series of political realignments: shifting to the NDA in 2017, switching back to the RJD-led alliance in 2022, and rejoining the NDA once again in 2024.

Despite his record number of swearing-ins, Kumar is not India’s longest-serving chief minister. He has spent 7,023 days in office so far, placing him eighth in Hindustan Times’ database. If he completes his full five-year term this time, he will become the third-longest-serving CM in Indian history, behind Sikkim’s Pawan Kumar Chamling and Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik.

Kumar has also worked with 14 governors during his time in office — the third-highest for any chief minister — trailing only Mizoram’s Lal Thanhawla and Himachal Pradesh’s Virbhadra Singh.