Nitish Kumar has once again been chosen as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar and will be sworn in as chief minister in Patna today. This will be the tenth time he takes the oath for the top post—an all-time record for any chief minister in India.

Even though the duration he has served as chief minister would ordinarily involve only about five oath ceremonies, Nitish Kumar’s political career has rarely followed a predictable path. His first stint as CM lasted only a week in 2000, ending after he failed to secure a majority. He later returned to office following the assembly elections in 2005 and 2010 when the NDA won power in the state. After his party, the JD(U), performed poorly in the 2014 elections—which it contested without both the BJP and the RJD—he stepped down and made Jitan Ram Manjhi the chief minister.

Kumar reclaimed the position in 2015 ahead of the assembly elections, marking his fourth swearing-in. He then took oath again following victories in the 2015 and 2020 elections, once as leader of the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance and once as an NDA partner. His unconventional political journey added three more oath ceremonies as he shifted alliances—moving to the NDA in 2017, switching back to the RJD in 2022, and returning to the NDA in 2024.

Despite these numerous oath ceremonies, Nitish Kumar is not India’s longest-serving chief minister. With 7,023 days in office, he currently ranks eighth. Should he complete the full upcoming term of 1,845 days, he would rise to third place, behind Sikkim’s Pawan Kumar Chamling and Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik. Nitish also features prominently on another metric: he has worked with 14 different governors while in office, placing him third on the list of chief ministers who have seen the most gubernatorial changes, behind Lal Thanhawla of Mizoram and Virbhadra Singh of Himachal Pradesh.