The First Indira Gandhi ministry was formed on 24 January 1966^[1] under the premiership of Indira Gandhi who was elected as the Prime Minister of India by the Congress Parliamentary Party to succeed Gulzarilal Nanda who was serving as the acting prime minister since 11 January 1966 following the untimely demise of Lal Bahadur Shastri. The cabinet remained in office until the 1967 general election in which Indira Gandhi was re-elected to office.

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First Indira Gandhi ministry
5th ministry of the Republic of India
Date formed	24 January 1966 (1966-01-24)
Date dissolved	13 March 1967 (1967-03-13)
People and organisations
Head of state	Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Head of government	Indira Gandhi
Member party	Indian National Congress
Status in legislature	Majority
Opposition party	None
Opposition leader	None
History
Outgoing election	1967
Predecessor	Second Nanda ministry
Successor	Second Indira Gandhi ministry

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Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri passed away suddenly on 11 January 1966 at Tashkent during his visit to Uzbek SSR, just a day after signing the Tashkent Declaration which formally ended the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. He was succeeded by Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda as the Acting Prime Minister. Nanda remained the prime minister for thirteen days until the election of Indira Gandhi who served as Minister of Information and Broadcasting in the cabinets of Shastri and Nanda. Indira Gandhi was formally elected as the Prime Minister by the ruling Indian National Congress party. She was thereupon formally sworn-in as the nation's third prime minister on 24 January 1966 by President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

Gandhi's council of ministers included a majority of the ministers from her predecessor's cabinet. Outgoing acting prime minister Gulzarilal Nanda was re-appointed home minister. She retained Defence Minister Yashwantrao Chavan, Education Minister M. C. Chagla, Railways Minister S. K. Patil, Finance Minister Sachindra Chaudhuri, Communications and Parliamentary Minister Satya Narayan Sinha, Agriculture Minister Chidambaram Subramaniam, External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh in their respective portfolios. Other ministers who were retained from the predecessor cabinet included Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Damodaram Sanjivayya, Manubhai Shah, Mehr Chand Khanna, Raj Bahadur, Surendra Kumar Dey, Sushila Nayyar, Jaisukhlal Hathi, Kotha Raghuramaiah, O. V. Alagesan, Ram Subhag Singh, Bali Ram Bhagat, A. M. Thomas, C. M. Poonacha, Jagannath Rao, C. R. Pattabhiraman, Bibudhendra Mishra, Tribhuvan Narain Singh, Shah Nawaz Khan, Dajisaheb Chavan, Purnendu Sekhar Naskar, B. S. Murthy, Lalit Narayan Mishra, T. S. Soundaram, Bhakt Darshan, Sham Nath, B. C. Bhagawati, Shyam Dhar Mishra.

• Two of the cabinet ministers, viz. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy would later serve as the 5th and 6th President of India respectively. Reddy would also serve as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha on two separate occasions.
• Minister of Law Gopal Swarup Pathak would later be elected as the 4th Vice President of India in 1969.
• Chidambaram Subramaniam, Satya Narayan Sinha, Gopal Swarup Pathak, Jaisukhlal Hathi, Bali Ram Bhagat, C. M. Poonacha, Tribhuvan Narain Singh, Mohammad Shafi Qureshi, Bhanu Prakash Singh, S. C. Jamir would later be appointed as governors of several states.
• Tribhuvan Narain Singh would later serve as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Prakash Chandra Sethi as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and S. C. Jamir as Chief Minister of Nagaland.