Chief Ministers of Tripura: Complete List, Tenure and Party

Tripura’s Chief Minister is Manik Saha of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He took the oath on 15 May 2022 after Biplab Kumar Deb stepped down mid-term, and he returned to the job after the 2023 assembly election, which makes him the eleventh person to hold the post since the office was created.

Eleven names is a small number for six decades, and that is the first thing worth noticing about Tripura. The state has swung between long, stable stretches and sudden collapses: one Chief Minister governed for very nearly twenty unbroken years, another lasted 101 days. Three separate spells of President’s Rule break the chain. The table below lists every holder in order, with exact dates, party and the gaps marked plainly. Where reliable sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than smoothed over.

How the Office Works in Tripura

The Chief Minister of Tripura is appointed by the Governor under Article 164 of the Constitution. The Governor appoints the leader who can command a majority in the Tripura Legislative Assembly, and the rest of the Council of Ministers is appointed on that Chief Minister’s advice. The Council is collectively responsible to the assembly, which is the practical source of the Chief Minister’s authority.

The formal term is five years, tied to the life of the assembly rather than to the individual. There is no limit on how many terms one person may serve. But the term ends the moment the house withdraws its confidence, and if no alternative majority emerges the state can be placed under President’s Rule through Article 356, with the Governor administering on behalf of the Union government.

Tripura’s assembly has 60 seats. The state elects two Lok Sabha members and one Rajya Sabha member. Tripura also has the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council under the Sixth Schedule, which governs a large share of the state’s land area and sits alongside the state government rather than under it — a structural feature that shapes almost every political calculation in Agartala.

Complete List of Chief Ministers of Tripura

Tripura became a Union Territory on 1 July 1963 and gained full statehood on 21 January 1972 under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971. The office of Chief Minister dates from the 1963 Union Territory arrangement, so the list starts there. Standard listings, including the Tripura Legislative Assembly’s own records, count the Union Territory Chief Ministers in the same numbered sequence as the post-statehood ones.

Three things stand out. First, no one has ever come back: every one of the eleven served a single continuous stint, so the count of individuals and the count of terms are the same number, which is unusual among Indian states. Second, the Left held the office for roughly 35 of the last 48 years, in two blocks — 1978 to 1988 and 1993 to 2018. Third, the President’s Rule of November 1971 is often shown as two rows because statehood arrived in the middle of it; it was a single continuous spell running from 1 November 1971 to 20 March 1972.

Longest-Serving and Most Notable Chief Ministers

Manik Sarkar is the record holder by a wide margin. He served 19 years and 363 days, from 11 March 1998 to 9 March 2018 — two days short of twenty years, and among the longest unbroken runs any Indian Chief Minister has managed. He won four consecutive elections and became nationally known for an austere personal style: he handed his salary to his party and drew a modest allowance, and successive affidavits showed him with almost no assets. His governments are credited with pulling Tripura’s literacy rate to the top of the national table and with winding down the insurgency that had gripped the state through the 1990s.

Nripen Chakraborty is the other towering figure. His decade in office from January 1978 built the Left Front’s base in Tripura and pushed through the land and tribal-welfare measures that defined the party’s appeal. The tenure ended badly in electoral terms, and Chakraborty was later expelled from the CPI(M) in 1995, but the institutional stamp of those ten years outlasted him.

Sachindra Lal Singh, the first Chief Minister, ran the Union Territory for eight years and 123 days without an interruption. Dasarath Deb matters for a different reason: a former leader of the Tripura tribal peasant movement, he was the state’s first tribal Chief Minister, and his 1993 government marked the Left’s return after a five-year Congress interval.

Biplab Kumar Deb’s four years from 2018 are consequential because they ended the twenty-five-year Left run and gave the BJP its first government in the state. His resignation in May 2022, roughly ten months before the assembly’s term ended, was a party decision rather than a floor defeat — a distinction worth keeping straight, because no confidence vote was lost.

Tripura has never had a woman Chief Minister.

How Power Has Shifted: Party Trends in Tripura

Tripura’s party history divides cleanly into four eras. Congress ran the Union Territory and the early state, from 1963 to 1977, broken only by the 1971-72 President’s Rule. The 1977 churn produced two brief non-Congress governments in quick succession — Congress for Democracy, then Janata Party — followed by another spell of central rule.

From 1978 the Left Front took over, first under Chakraborty for ten years. Congress and the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti combined to unseat it in 1988 and held office for five years. The Left returned in 1993 and stayed until 2018, a run of nearly twenty-five years under Dasarath Deb and then Manik Sarkar. The BJP’s win in 2018, in alliance with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura, ended that, and the party has held the office since.

The pattern is that Tripura does not do frequent alternation. It commits to one formation for a long stretch, then switches decisively. Since 1978 the state has changed governing party only three times.

Records and Quick Facts

Longest tenure: Manik Sarkar, 19 years and 363 days across four terms.

Shortest tenure: Radhika Ranjan Gupta, 101 days in 1977. Prafulla Kumar Das is close behind at 116 days in the same year.

Most terms: Manik Sarkar, four consecutive assembly terms. No other Tripura Chief Minister has served more than two.

President’s Rule spells: three — 1 November 1971 to 20 March 1972, 5 November 1977 to 5 January 1978, and 11 March to 10 April 1993. The 1993 spell lasted a month, the shortest of the three.

Returns to office: none. Every Chief Minister of Tripura has served exactly one continuous stint.

Party with the most Chief Ministers: Indian National Congress, with four, though the CPI(M)’s three have held office far longer in total.

First Chief Minister: Sachindra Lal Singh, from 1 July 1963.

First tribal Chief Minister: Dasarath Deb, from 10 April 1993.

Women Chief Ministers: none so far.

On the small print: the Union Territory Chief Ministers of 1963-72 are counted in the main sequence by the assembly’s own records and by standard reference listings, so the total is eleven. Listings that begin only at statehood in 1972 will show ten. Both are defensible; the difference is a counting convention, not a factual dispute.

FAQ

Who is the current Chief Minister of Tripura? Manik Saha of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was sworn in on 15 May 2022 after Biplab Kumar Deb resigned, and he took the oath again on 8 March 2023 following the BJP-IPFT win in the 2023 assembly election.

Who was the first Chief Minister of Tripura? Sachindra Lal Singh of the Indian National Congress, who took office on 1 July 1963 when Tripura became a Union Territory. Sukhamoy Sen Gupta, from 20 March 1972, was the first Chief Minister of Tripura as a full state.

Who served the longest as Chief Minister of Tripura? Manik Sarkar of the CPI(M), for 19 years and 363 days between 11 March 1998 and 9 March 2018 — four consecutive terms without a break.

How many Chief Ministers has Tripura had? Eleven, counting from the creation of the office in 1963. Because no one has ever returned to the post after leaving it, that is also the number of separate terms.

How is the Chief Minister of Tripura appointed? The Governor appoints the person who can command a majority in the 60-member Tripura Legislative Assembly, under Article 164. The Council of Ministers is appointed on the Chief Minister’s advice and stays collectively responsible to the assembly.

Practice Questions

Practice MCQs

1. Tripura attained full statehood on which date? (a) 1 July 1963 (b) 21 January 1972 (c) 20 March 1972 (d) 5 January 1978 Answer: (b) Statehood came on 21 January 1972 under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, while Tripura had been a Union Territory since 1 July 1963.
2. Who holds the record for the longest tenure as Chief Minister of Tripura? (a) Nripen Chakraborty (b) Dasarath Deb (c) Manik Sarkar (d) Sachindra Lal Singh Answer: (c) Manik Sarkar served 19 years and 363 days across four consecutive terms from 1998 to 2018.
3. Under which Article is the Chief Minister of a state appointed by the Governor? (a) Article 155 (b) Article 163 (c) Article 164 (d) Article 356 Answer: (c) Article 164 provides for the appointment of the Chief Minister by the Governor and of other ministers on the Chief Minister’s advice.
4. How many spells of President’s Rule has Tripura seen since 1963? (a) One (b) Two (c) Three (d) Five Answer: (c) Three — in 1971-72, 1977-78 and 1993.
5. Who was Tripura’s first Chief Minister from a party other than the Congress or the CPI(M)? (a) Prafulla Kumar Das (b) Radhika Ranjan Gupta (c) Biplab Kumar Deb (d) Samir Ranjan Barman Answer: (a) Prafulla Kumar Das of the Congress for Democracy took office on 1 April 1977, ahead of Radhika Ranjan Gupta of the Janata Party later that year.