The record the Assembly keeps of Kerala's Chief Ministers and their tenures

Background

The Kerala Legislative Assembly keeps a table of everyone who has been Chief Minister of the State, with the day each tenure began and ended. The table runs to 24 tenures held by 13 individuals, because several returned to the office more than once. E M S Namboodiripad heads the list as the first Chief Minister of Kerala. K Karunakaran appears four separate times, more than anyone else. E K Nayanar and A K Antony each appear three times, and C Achutha Menon, Oommen Chandy and Pinarayi Vijayan twice each. The shortest tenures in the table lasted only weeks. Others on the list include Pattom A Thanu Pillai, R Sankar, P K Vasudevan Nair, C H Mohammed Koya and V S Achuthanandan. Reading the table is a quick way to see how often governments changed in the State's early decades compared with its later full five-year terms.