Producer: Priyanka Das Editor: Aparna Singh
Nirmala Sitharaman, who has served a full term as a finance minister, has been included in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet in his third consecutive term.
She has become the first woman to be sworn in as minister for the third term of the National Democratic Alliance government.
Nirmala Sitharaman was born in Madurai on August 18, 1959, to Narayan Sitharaman (who worked in the Railways) and Savitri (a homemaker).
She studied economics at Tiruchirapalli’s Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College. She then moved to Delhi to pursue her Master’s and Master of Philosophy in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
But before the veteran politician forayed into politics, she was part of the corporate world in the United Kingdom.
Nirmala Sitharaman’s political career started in 2008 when she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (she returned to India in the early 1990s).
In two years, she became the party’s second female spokesperson after Sushma Swaraj.
As the Union finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman has so far tabled six budgets. This includes the February 1 Interim Budget.
She became the second finance minister to present her sixth straight budget after equaling her record with former PM Morarji Desai.
Steering away from the traditional leather briefcase, the 64-year-old Union Minister opted for a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ style pouch.