Sikkim's Pawan Chamling becomes longest serving Chief Minister, surpasses Jyoti Basu

Pawan Chamling, Chief Minister of Sikkim scripted history in India on April 28 by becoming the longest serving Chief Minister of the country. On April 28, Chamling surpassed the record held by Jyoti Basu as the longest-serving Chief Minister of India.

Meanwhile, Dr Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh, who is the longest-serving CM from the BJP and Naveen Patnaik, Odisha’s longest-serving CM—are in the race to clinch fourth and fifth terms in their states.

While veteran communist Jyoti Basu ruled West Bengal for 23 years from June 21, 1977 till November 6, 2000, Pawan Kumar Chamling became Chief Minister of the Himalayan state on December 12, 1994 and completed his 24th year in office on Sunday.

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Chamling is set to take the record to another distance given that there is still one year more to go in his fifth term as the Chief Minister of Sikkim.

Here’s all you need to know about Pawan Chamling:

Chamling, born on September 22, 1950, is the fifth and incumbent Chief Minister of the northeastern state- Sikkim.

Chamling is the second chief minister in India after Jyoti Basu, of West Bengal to govern a state five terms in a row.

Chamling’s party Sikkim Democratic Front winning the 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 Sikkim Legislative Assembly elections.

Chamling, who started his political journey in 1973 is the founder president of the Sikkim Democratic Front, which has governed the state for five successive terms since 1994

Prior to establishing the Sikkim Democratic Front, Chamling served as Minister for Industries, Information and Public Relations from 1989 to 1992 in the Nar Bahadur Bhandari cabinet.

In 1982, Chamling was chosen the president of Yangang Gram Panchayat unopposed. After three years, he became an MLA.

In 1989, he won the Assembly election with a record 97 percent of the total vote cast and became a Cabinet minister in the Nar Bahadur Bhandari ministry.

In 1993, Chamling founded the Sikkim Democratic Front that secured a majority in the Assembly polls the next year.

Since 1993, he has seen only success—in 2009, Chamling’s popularity was so high that he won all the 32 Assembly seats and the lone Lok Sabha seat.

Under Chamling’s leadership, Sikkim is one of the fastest growing states as its GDP between 2011-12 and 2016-17 expanded at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.05 percent to $2.93 billion whereas the Net State Domestic Product grew at a CAGR of 11.30 percent to $2.58 billion.

Though Chamling claimed growth, former Indian football team captain Bhaichung Bhutia, who recently launched his Hamro Sikkim Party in New Delhi, vowed to fight the 2019 Assembly elections on the planks of corruption, urban-rural growth gap and environmental degradation through dams. Bhaichung is enormously popular in the state and may emerge as a game changer with his hard-hitting issues.

Of the 32 Assembly seats, ruling SDF has 29 MLAs while opposition Sikkim Krantikari Morcha has only 2 seats. The lone independent MLA is a brother of the Chief Minister.