One card per person, in order of first term. Acting prime ministers have no card.
INC? ? ?
INC? ? ?
INC? ? ?
Janata? ? ?
JP (S)? ? ?
INC? ? ?
Janata Dal? ? ?
SJP? ? ?
INC? ? ?
BJP? ? ?
Janata Dal? ? ?
Janata Dal? ? ?
INC? ? ?
BJP? ? ?
Photo credits
- Portraits come from Wikimedia Commons. The photographers are:
- Prime Minister's Office (Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi) · GODL-India
- Government of India (Atal Bihari Vajpayee) · GODL-India
- India Post, Government of India (Chandra Shekhar) · GODL-India
- Christian Lambiotte / European Commission (V. P. Singh, P. V. Narasimha Rao) · CC BY 4.0
- Charan Singh Archives (Charan Singh) · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Biswarup Ganguly (I. K. Gujral) · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Viksb (Lal Bahadur Shastri) · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Bart Molendijk / Anefo (Rajiv Gandhi) · CC BY-SA 3.0 NL
- Prathyush Thomas (H. D. Deve Gowda) · GFDL 1.2
- The other 3 portraits are in the public domain.
Rules & what counts
Prime Ministers of India Quiz: Rules & What Counts
The prime minister of India runs the government. This quiz shows a portrait of every prime minister since independence in 1947, and you type the names.
The grid has 14 cards, one per PERSON rather than per term. Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee each came back after losing power, so their cards list every term.
Everyone lands Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Modi. The run-killer is the stretch of short governments between 1989 and 1998, when five men held the office in nine years.
How to play
- Just start typing. The quiz checks your answer at every keystroke. There is no submit button.
- Surnames are enough where they name one person: "nehru", "vajpayee" and "gujral" all work. "Gandhi" and "Singh" fit several cards, so type the full name for those.
- Each card wears the party the prime minister led in office. Solving the card reveals the name and the years.
- Spelling is forgiving. Capitals, periods and accents are ignored, and common misspellings such as "Bajpai" and "Rajeev Gandhi" are accepted.
- The timer starts at your first keystroke and counts up. Give Up ends the run and shows every portrait you missed. Progress saves automatically.
What counts in this quiz
- All 14 people appointed prime minister, from Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947 to Narendra Modi today.
- One card per person, placed by the first term. A prime minister with several terms has one card that lists them all.
- Portraits are freely licensed. The recent ones are official portraits from the Prime Minister's Office, under the Government Open Data Licence of India.
What's not included, and why
- Acting prime ministers have no card. Gulzarilal Nanda stood in twice, for 13 days each time, after Nehru died and after Shastri died.
- Presidents are not here. They have a quiz of their own: Presidents of India.
- The office begins at independence in 1947, so the viceroys of British India have no card.
Good to know
- Jawaharlal Nehru served 16 years and 286 days, the longest term any Indian prime minister has held.
- Charan Singh never faced Parliament as prime minister. He resigned before the confidence vote and served 23 days.
- Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were mother and son. Both were assassinated in office.
- Manmohan Singh was the economist who opened India's economy in 1991 as finance minister, then led the country for 10 years.
- Morarji Desai was 81 when he took office in 1977, the oldest man to become prime minister of India.