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Nirmala Sitharaman takes charge of the Ministry of Finance | India News
NEW DELHI: Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday took charge of the finance ministry for the second consecutive term and is expected to soon present the final budget for FY25, which will set the tone for the Modi government’s priorities and direction 3.0 for Viksit Bharat . Upon reaching the North Block office, Sitharaman was greeted by Finance Secretary TV Somanathan and other senior officials.
Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary was also present. Chaudhary took charge on Tuesday night.
Sitharaman, who is credited with carrying out second-generation reforms in her last term, would be creating a record by presenting the seventh budget in a row and the sixth full budget consecutively. The complete budget for FY25 is likely to be presented to the newly formed 18th Lok Sabha next month.
She has many records in her political career. She created a record when she was named the first woman Raksha Mantri in 2017. Before that, she was the Minister of Industry and Commerce.
When her mentor Arun Jaitley (finance minister 2014-19) fell ill, Sitharaman was given the finance portfolio in the newly re-elected Modi government after the 2019 general elections.
Shortly after coming to power, the first major reform was a cut in base corporate tax from 30% to 22%, to support the economy hit by demonetization and the implementation of GST.
The following year, India resisted the Covid-19 pandemic with a series of policy measures announced for the poor and continued to be considered the fastest growing large economy and a “bright spot” in the world economy.
To overcome difficulties during the pandemic, the government announced a special economic package worth Rs 20 lakh crore, equivalent to around 10% of India’s GDP.
It has led the economy from a contraction of almost 24 percent in the first quarter of FY21, to the world’s fastest growing economy.
Despite the fiscal expansion, it continued to follow the path of fiscal consolidation and managed to reduce the fiscal deficit to 5.6 percent of GDP, compared to the previous estimate of 5.8 percent in FY24.
She also set a record by presenting the sixth consecutive budget, five annual budgets and one interim budget – a feat achieved so far only by former prime minister Morarji Desai.
After the Modi government came to power in 2014, Arun Jaitley took charge of the Finance Ministry and presented five consecutive budgets from 2014-15 to 2018-19.
In 2017, Jaitley departed from the colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget on the last working day of February to the 1st of every month.
Following in the footsteps of her mentor, Sitharaman also abandoned the traditional Budget briefcase and opted for a bahi-khata with the National Emblem to carry the speech and other documents.
Born in Madurai on August 18, 1959, to Narayan Sitharaman (who worked in the railways) and Savitri (a housewife), Nirmala Sitharaman studied economics at Tiruchirapalli’s Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College.
She then moved to the capital to pursue master’s and master’s degrees in the subject from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
But before Sitharaman entered politics, she was part of the corporate world in the UK, where she lived with her husband Parakala Prabhakar.
The two met while studying at JNU and married in 1986. They have a daughter, Parakala Vangmayi.
Sitharaman’s political career began in 2008 when she joined the BJP (she returned to India in the early 1990s) and within two years became the party’s second female spokesperson after Sushma Swaraj, answering questions from journalists at party headquarters and also becoming a familiar face in television debates.
Before delving into politics, she served as deputy director of the Center for Public Policy Studies in Hyderabad and also opened a school in the city.