A Chief Minister is the elected head of government of a sub-national (e.g. constituent federal) state, provinces of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, notably a state (and sometimes a union territory) of India, a territory of Australia or a British Overseas Territory that has attained self-government. It is also used as the English version of the title given to the heads of governments of the Malay states without a monarchy.

The title is also used in the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man (since 1986), in Guernsey (since 2004), and in Jersey (since 2005).

In Malaysia, it is used to refer to the heads of government, called in their Malay language term Ketua Menteri (literally Chief Minister), of the Malaysian states without a sultan, i.e., Malacca, Penang, Sabah and Sarawak, while the Malay language term Menteri Besar (literally Great Minister) is used in other states with a monarch.

By analogy the term is often applied to various other high ministerial offices, e.g. in a princely state before or during the British raj.

Omar Abdullah (Hindi: उमर अब्दुल्लाह, Urdu: عمر عبدالله), born 10 March 1970, is an Indian Kashmiri politician and the scion of one of the state's most prominent political family, the Abdullah family who became the 11th and the youngest Chief Minister of the northern Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, after forming a government in coalition with the Congress party, on January 5, 2009.

He was a member of 14th Lok Sabha, representing Srinagar constituency of Jammu and Kashmir, India. He was a Union Minister of State for External affairs in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's NDA government, from July 23, 2001 to December 23, 2002. He resigned from NDA government in October 2002 to concentrate on party work.

Omar joined politics in 1998, as a Lok Sabha member, a feat he repeated in subsequent three elections and also remained a Union minister; he took on the mantle of National Conference from his father in 2002, though he lost his own seat of Ganderbal during the 2002 state assembly elections, and so did his party, the political mandate; four years later, he contested once again from the same seat and won in the 2008 Kashmir Elections.

O. Paneer Selvam (Tamil: ஒ. பன்னீர்செல்வம் ) (born January 1951) is the current Finance Minister and a former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Prior to his entry into politics, he owned agricultural lands and a tea shop which he still owns. He was the chairman of Periakulam municipality in 1996. Then he contested the 2001 MLA election from Periakulam and become the PWD minister. He is the first person from Thevar caste to become the CM of Tamil Nadu. He was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in September 2001 after the appointment of the then Chief Minister and AIADMK party chief J. Jayalalithaa was quashed by the Supreme Court of India. In March 2002, he resigned as Chief Minister and J. Jayalalithaa was sworn in after the Supreme Court overturned her conviction and sentence and she won a by-election from Andipatti assembly constituency. During his stint as Chief Minister, he was widely criticized of heading a puppet government closely micro-managed by Jayalalithaa.

After his resignation he became the Public Works Department minister in the Jayalalithaa government. O. Paneer Selvam was the leader of the AIADMK legislative party and the Leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly for about two weeks, after the party lost the assembly elections in May 2006. In that election he was elected to be the member of Tamil Nadu legislative assembly from Periyakulam. After all the AIADMK legislators were suspended by the speaker of the house, Jayalalithaa who had decided not to attend the Legislative Assembly decided to return and replaced O. Paneer Selvam as the Leader of the Opposition. [1] He has been twice elected to the Tamil Nadu assembly from Periyakulam constituency. His confidants affectionately call him, with his initials, 'OPS'.

Arvind Kumar Kejriwal (born 16 June 1968) is a retired Indian Revenue Service officer and an Indian social activist fighting for greater transparency in Government. He was awarded Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006, for activating India's Right to Information movement at grassroots and social activities to empower the poorest citizens to fight corruption by holding the government answerable to the people. Kejriwal is also a Saathi (fellow) of the Association for India's Development, a Global Impact award winning NGO.

Arvind Kejriwal was born in a Marwari family in Hissar, Haryana in 1968. His father was an engineer and he spent most of his childhood living in small northern Indian towns like Sonepat, Mathura and Hissar. He did his schooling from Campus School. Kejriwal graduated from IIT Kharagpur as a Mechanical engineer in 1989.

Kejriwal joined Tata Steel right after his graduation from IIT Kharagpur. Kejriwal quit his job with Tata Steel in 1992^{[citation needed]} and spent some time working with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, the Ramakrishna Mission in the North-East India and Nehru Yuva Kendra.