Prime Minister of India
Head of the Government of India
The prime minister of India (ISO: Bhāratīya Gaṇarājyasya Pradhānamantrī) is the head of government of the Republic of India. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and his chosen Council of Ministers, despite the President of India being the nominal head of state. The prime minister has to be a member of one of the houses of bicameral Parliament of India, alongside heading the respective house. The prime minister and the cabinet are at all times responsible to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament.
The sitting prime minister ranks third in the Order of Precedence of India and is appointed by the president of India; however, the prime minister has to enjoy the confidence of the majority of Lok Sabha members, who are directly elected every five years, lest the prime minister shall resign. The prime minister can be a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament. The prime minister controls the selection and dismissal of members of the Union Council of Ministers and allocation of posts to members within the government.
The longest-serving prime minister was the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, whose tenure lasted 16 years and 286 days. His premiership was followed by Lal Bahadur Shastri's short tenure and Indira Gandhi's 11- and 4-year-long tenures, with both politicians belonging to the Indian National Congress. After Indira Gandhi's assassination, her son Rajiv Gandhi took charge until 1989, when a decade with five unstable governments began.
The public source identifies “Prime Minister of India” as head of the Government of India. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Prime, Minister and India.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q192711. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prime Minister of India” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.