| Cabinet Name: | Third Nayanar Ministry |
| Cabinet Number: | 17th |
| Jurisdiction: | Kerala |
| Incumbent: | 1996-2001 |
| Date Formed: | 20 May 1996 |
| Date Dissolved: | 13 May 2001 |
| Government Head: | E. K. Nayanar |
| Opposition Leader: | A. K. Antony |
| Previous: | Second Antony ministry |
| Successor: | Third Antony ministry |
| Election: | 1996 |
The Tenth Kerala Legislative Assembly Council of Ministers, third E. K. Nayanar ministry, was a Kerala Council of Ministers (Kerala Cabinet), the executive wing of Kerala state government, led by CPI (M) leader E. K. Nayanar from May 1996 to May 2001. It had sixteen ministries and overall twenty ministers.
The Kerala Council of Ministers, during Nayanar's third term as Chief Minister of Kerala, consisted of:[1]
| Minister | Ministry | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E. K. Nayanar | Chief Minister (Also had the charge of Home Department) | ||
| 2 | T. Sivadasa Menon | Minister for Finance | ||
| 3a | Pinarayi Vijayan | Minister for Electricity and Co-operation | resigned 19 October 1998 | |
| 3b | S. Sharma | Minister for Electricity and Co-operation | assumed office 25 October 1998 | |
| 4a | Baby John | Minister for Irrigation and Labour | resigned 7 January 1998 | |
| 4b | V. P. Ramakrishna Pillai | Minister for Irrigation and Labour | assumed office 7 January 1998 | |
| 5 | E. Chandrasekharan Nair | Minister for Food, Tourism, and Law | ||
| 6a | A. C. Shanmughadas | Minister for Health and Sports | resigned 19 January 2000 | |
| 6b | V.C Kabeer | Minister for Health and Sports | assumed office 19 January 2000 | |
| 7 | K. Radhakrishnan | Minister for Welfare of Backward and Scheduled communities | ||
| 8a | V. K. Rajan | Minister for Agriculture | died in office 29 May 1997 | |
| 8b | Krishnan Kaniyamparampil | Minister for Agriculture | assumed office 9 June 1997 | |
| 9 | T. K. Ramakrishnan | Minister for Fisheries and Rural Development | ||
| 10a | P. R. Kurup | Minister for Forests and Transport | resigned 11 January 1999 | |
| 10b | A. Neelalohitha Dasan Nadar | Minister for Forests and Transport | assumed office 20 January 1999 resigned 13 February 2000 | |
| 10c | C. K. Nanu | Minister for Forests and Transport | assumed office 13 February 2000 | |
| 11 | K. E. Ismail | Minister for Revenue | ||
| 12 | P. J. Joseph | Minister for Education and Public Works | ||
| 13 | Paloli Muhammed Kutty | Minister for Local Administration | ||
| 14 | Susheela Gopalan | Minister for Industries and Social Welfare |
This was the third and last term of E. K. Nayanar as the Chief Minister, and the only one in which he completed a full term as chief minister. He did not contest in the 1996 Legislative elections, and V. S. Achuthanandan, another senior Communist leader, was designated as the Chief Minister candidate. When the election results came, the Left Democratic Front won the majority of seats, but Achuthanandan lost. In this special situation, a meeting was held by the CPI (M), which unanimously supported Nayanar as the Chief Minister. When Nayanar left the office after completing his term in May 2001, he had become the longest served Chief Minister of Kerala, serving for 4009 days in total.