Modi Cabinet 3.0: Nirmala Sitharaman Returns as India’s Finance Minister
Nirmala Sitaraman has credited a great economic success in India over the past five years. She is the only woman included in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet for the third consecutive term. As per the decision by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nirmala Sitaraman is reappointed as the country’s Finance Minister. Modi also made this announcement while taking his oath of office for his historic third term as the prime minister of India. The President’s secretariat released a press communique on Monday stating, that Nirmala Sitaraman has been given out the portfolios of the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Corporate Affairs. She was also allotted with these portfolios in Modi’s second government formation period.
The first challenge for Nirmala Sitaraman, who possesses degrees like Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) degrees in Economics from a well recognised University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), is to present a full budget for the financial year 2024-25.
Nirmala Sitaraman also released an interim budget for FY25 in the month of February. An interim budget is a budget presented by the central government that would be ruling at that point or is in its last year in office ahead of general elections. It is a short-term financial plan to fund the central government spending, ruling at that point until re-elections are organised and a new central government is formed. The full budget for the financial year 2024-25 is anticipated to be presented in the month of July 2024.
Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman was born in Madurai on August 18, 1959. She was a homemaker before and later worked in the Indian Railways and Savitri. She was first appointed to Modi’s cabinet in the year 2014 as Commerce and Industry Minister. She was appointed as Defence Minister in 2017 and became the first woman to hold the portfolio full-time.
Nirmala Sitaraman was given the opportunity to charge of the finance portfolio after the general elections of 2019, in Modi’s second government period. In the year 2019, she became the second woman after Prime Minister Indra Gandhi (who presented the union budget for the financial year 1970-71) to present the union budget and also the first and one and only woman appointed as the full-time finance minister as of now.
Till now, Nirmala Sitaraman has presented six consecutive budgets, including the interim budget of February 2024. The full budget that is to be released for the financial year 2024-25 is likely to be released in July 2024 and will be the seventh consecutive budget of Nirmala Sitaraman. With this release, she will break the record of Morarji Desai, who released a total of six budgets in his time. Morarji Desai has also got the distinction of presenting the highest number of union budgets.
Nirmala Sitaraman is also responsible for taking out the Indian economy at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. An array of policy measures were announced by the Indian government to help the Indian economy recover fast. At that time India’s GDP growth increased to 8.2%. As per the reports, it was said India will be the world’s fifth-largest economy, with growing of 7.2% by the end of March 2025.
