Prime Minister / Post Meridiem

PM Full Form in English, letter by letter

PM stands for Prime Minister, the head of government in India, and for post meridiem, the hours between noon and midnight.

PM Full Form in Indian Languages

In an Indian headline PM nearly always means Prime Minister, while on a train ticket or a meeting invite it means the afternoon. Here is Prime Minister in six Indian languages.

Prime Minister: who runs the government

The Prime Minister is the head of government in a parliamentary system, and in India that means the person who actually runs the administration. The President is the head of state and acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister, as Article 74 of the Constitution requires.

The President appoints the Prime Minister under Article 75, in practice the leader of the party or alliance that can command a majority in the Lok Sabha, and the other ministers are appointed on the Prime Minister's advice. The Prime Minister need not sit in the Lok Sabha: Manmohan Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha through both his terms. A minister who is not a member of either House must become one within six months.

The size of the council is capped at 15% of the Lok Sabha's strength by the 91st Amendment of 2003, which works out to 81 ministers with 543 elected members. The Prime Minister chairs the Cabinet and its key committees, chairs the NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission in 2015, and heads the PMO, the Prime Minister's Office.

What the office does, and what it cannot

Powers that matter

Ministers hold office during the pleasure of the President, which in practice means the Prime Minister, so a reshuffle needs no vote of Parliament. The office sets the Cabinet agenda, leads India at summits and speaks for the government on the floor of the House.

Limits on the office

The Prime Minister is not the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. That is the President, under Article 53. Money cannot be spent unless Parliament has sanctioned it. A government that loses a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha must resign, which is why coalition arithmetic matters so much.

Pay and facilities

The salary is fixed by Parliament by law: the Prime Minister receives it as an MP plus the statutory allowances for the office, along with an official residence in New Delhi and security cover.

India's prime ministers in numbers

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister, from independence on 15 August 1947 until his death in May 1964, and remains the longest-serving. By the usual count, fourteen people have held the office, and only one of them, Indira Gandhi, was a woman.

Gulzarilal Nanda served as acting Prime Minister twice, each time for about two weeks, after the deaths of Nehru in 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966, and is usually not counted in the fourteen. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's first spell in 1996 lasted only 13 days before a second, longer run from 1998 to 2004. Narendra Modi, in office since 26 May 2014, is the first Prime Minister born after independence.

Every Prime Minister has been a member of Parliament while in office. Voters elect the House and not the Prime Minister directly, and the majority in the House then decides who leads the government.

When PM means post meridiem

Outside politics, PM is Latin post meridiem, the half of the day from noon to midnight, paired with AM, ante meridiem. Twelve in the afternoon is 12:00 PM and midnight is 12:00 AM, a quirk that trips up anyone scheduling meetings across time zones.

A 24-hour clock avoids the confusion. Indian railway tickets, airline schedules and defence timings use it, so 8 PM becomes 20:00. When setting an alarm or a meeting at noon or midnight, writing 12 noon or 12 midnight in words is safer.

PM as a short form in schemes and offices

In scheme names, PM is the first word of dozens of programmes, such as PM-Kisan, PM Awas Yojana and PM Ujjwala Yojana, where it means Pradhan Mantri. The programme still belongs to the department that runs it, and only the branding carries the Prime Minister's title.

In offices, PM also stands for project manager, preventive maintenance and private message, and in a Hindi sentence Pradhan Mantri appears next to the English letters. The context of the document decides which one applies.

In Indian news, PM is the Prime Minister, chosen by the majority in the Lok Sabha and answerable to Parliament on money and on confidence. On a clock, the same letters mark the afternoon.

PM Full Form: Common Questions