OOn 22 March 2026, Narendra Modi completed 8,931 days as the head of an elected government in India, with more than thirteen years as Chief Minister of Gujarat (from 7 October 2001 to 21 May 2014) with three consecutive terms as Prime Minister. This milestone broke the record of Pawan Kumar Chamling who served as Chief Minister of Sikkim for 8,930 days. Neither the congratulations from within the ruling dispensation nor the alarm from its critics address the constitutional question made inevitable by the milestone: why does India’s constitution place no limit on how long an individual can hold an office that has real executive power?
India is unusual among major democracies in this regard. The United States adopted the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, responding to Franklin Roosevelt’s four consecutive terms in office. South Korea, Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia have implemented presidential term limits. In parliamentary democracies, the issue is considered less pressing because the prime minister serves with the confidence of the legislature. But this theoretical availability of removal is precisely the assumption that calls for scrutiny in the Indian context.
Reasoning of the Constituent Assembly
The reasoning of the Constituent Assembly was most influentially expressed by BR Ambedkar in his speech of November 4, 1948, in which he presented the draft constitution. Ambedkar distinguished between the “daily review of accountability” available through questions, no-confidence motions and adjournment motions, and the “periodic review” offered by fixed-term elections. Daily assessment, he argued, was much more effective. No time limit was needed because the legislature’s trust served as an ongoing check. The logic reflected Westminster practice, where no prime minister was term-limited but a committee of the ruling party could dismiss its own leader, as Tory MPs dismissed Margaret Thatcher in 1990.
What violated the Tenth Plan
The Fifty-second Amendment (1985) inserted the Tenth Schedule, which provided for the disqualification of any legislator who votes against a party whip. The Supreme Court in Kihoto Hollohan Vs. Zachillhu (1992) upheld its constitutionality as a measure to protect the integrity of the electoral mandate. But the Tenth Plan fundamentally changed the relationship between the legislature and the executive on which Ambedkar relied. In the anti-defensive regime, a member of the ruling party who votes against the government on a vote of confidence faces disqualification. A motion of no confidence, the very tool to replace term limits, becomes a dead letter whenever the ruling party has a working majority.
The British safety valve does not work in India either. Indian political parties have no institutionalized mechanism for leadership challenges. Anti-rollback law locks lawmakers into party loyalty; The absence of internal party democracy locks the party into loyalty to its leader. The review, which was supposed to replace term limits, was banned twice.
Comparative evidence
In their study of executive term avoidance, Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, and Zachary Elkins show that leaders in many regions have sought to extend their terms through constitutional amendment, replacement, or judicial interpretation. Ginsburg and Aziz Huq further argued that democratic decline more often occurs through gradual institutional decline than through sudden authoritarian disintegration. India didn’t need to lift the time limit because it never had one. The question is whether the absence of a formal limit, combined with the neutralization of parliamentary accountability, creates the same structural risks that term limits are intended to prevent elsewhere.
Presidential irony
India has developed a convention against a third presidential term, although the presidency is largely ceremonial. No president has served more than two terms. Expectation meets the three-part test of constitutional conventions set out by Ivor Jennings in The Law and the Constitution (1959): precedents exist, the actors believed they were bound by the rule, and the rule has a reason. The office, which has no real executive power, is limited by convention. The office, which holds virtually all executive power, is limited only by a regular voter verdict, with the anti-transcendence law largely preventing other accountability mechanisms.
The critic’s objection and its limits
The strongest counterargument is that voters have supported Mr. Modi’s term in office three times in a row and that a term limit would override their expressed preferences. The objection is serious; the term limit is anti-democratic in the truest sense of the word. But it rests on an assumption that Ambedkar rested on: that regular elections combined with parliamentary accountability are enough to discipline the executive. If this responsibility has been structurally eroded by the Tenth Plan, elections have to bear a heavier burden. And elections, however free, are a weak constraint on the compounding benefits of extended tenure: control over appointments to regulatory bodies, the Electoral Commission and the higher judiciary; the ability to shape the information environment; and the ability to calibrate policy for electoral benefit over multiple cycles.
What can be done
A more natural reform is to restore the mechanism the framers relied on. Exclude the vote of confidence from the disqualification provisions of the Tenth Plan so that legislators can dismiss the government without losing their seats. A more ambitious option is a constitutional amendment limiting the consecutive terms of office of a prime minister or chief minister while allowing for a return after a gap. The state-level dimension is equally urgent given the extended tenures of leaders like Jyoti Basu, Naveen Patnaik and Pinarayi Vijayan.
The 8,931-day milestone will force attention to whether India’s parliamentary system retains the self-healing capacity its framers relied on. The evidence suggests not. And the presidential convention against unlimited possession only applies to an office that doesn’t need it. This loophole deserves scrutiny regardless of who holds office.
(V. Venkatesan is a journalist and legal researcher)
Published – 6 Apr 2026 06:50 IST
