Nirmala Sitharaman

Parakala Prabhakar

​

(m. 1986)​

Nirmala Sitharaman
Sitharaman in 2025
Minister of Finance
Incumbent
Assumed office 30 May 2019
Children	1
Alma mater	Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College (BA) Jawaharlal Nehru University (MA, MPhil)

Nirmala Sitharaman (born 18 August 1959) is an Indian economist and politician who has served as the Minister of Finance and Minister of Corporate Affairs of the Government of India since 2019. A senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She has represented Karnataka as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, since 2016, prior to representing Andhra Pradesh from 2014 to 2016. Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 8 times, the second most after Morarji Desai. In 2025, she became the first person to table the Union Budget 8 consecutive times. She is second only to Morarji Desai to present the most number of budgets.

She served as a junior minister in the First Modi ministry between 2014 and 2017, holding successive positions, first for her dual appointment as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance and the Minister of State in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs from May to November 2014, and then as the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry from May 2014 to September 2017, before being elevated to senior posts within the Union Cabinet. Sitharaman previously served as the 28th Defence Minister from 2017 to 2019, becoming India's second female defence minister and the second female finance minister after Indira Gandhi, and the first full-time female minister to hold each of those portfolios. In July 2025, she became the longest continuous serving finance minister in Indian history, by surpassing C.D. Deshmukh.

Early life and education

Nirmala Sitharaman was born on 18 August 1959 in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. ^{[1] [2]} She was born in a Tamil Iyengar family to Savitri and Narayanan Sitharaman. ^[3] She had her schooling at Sacred Heart Convent Anglo-Indian School, Villupuram, till primary level and thereafter at Vidyodaya School in Chennai. ^[4] She then studied at St. Philomena’s School and at Holy Cross School in Tiruchirappalli. ^[5]

In 1980, Sitharaman obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, Tiruchirapalli, and a Master of Arts degree in Economics and M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, in 1984. ^{[6] [7]} She then enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Economics with a focus on Indo-European trade but later left this program and moved to London when her husband secured a scholarship at the London School of Economics. ^{[8] [9]}

Non-political career

Nirmala Sitharaman worked as a salesperson at Habitat, a home decor store in London's Regent Street. ^[10] She has served as an assistant to Economist in the Agricultural Engineers Association in the UK. During her stay in the UK, she has also served as a Senior Manager (R&D) for PwC and briefly at the BBC World Service. ^{[11] [12]} In 2017, she was one of the founding directors of Pranava The School, a private co-educational school in Hyderabad. ^{[13] [14]}

Early political career

Nirmala Sitharaman served as a member of the National Commission for Women from 2003 to 2005. ^[15] She then joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2008 as a national spokesperson until 2014. In 2014, she was inducted into Narendra Modi's first cabinet as the Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry and was elected in June of that year as a Rajya Sabha Member from Andhra Pradesh. ^[16] In May 2016, she was one of the 12 candidates nominated by the BJP to contest the Rajya Sabha elections due on 11 June. ^[17] She successfully contested her seat from Karnataka. ^[18]

Union Cabinet Minister

Union Defence Minister

Sitharaman as the Union Minister of Defence in New Delhi, 7 September 2017

Sitharaman pictured during her tenure as Union Minister of Defence, January 2018

On 3 September 2017, she was appointed as Minister of Defence, being only the second woman after Indira Gandhi to hold the post, but the first full-time female defence minister. ^[19] Under her tenure, the army conducted the Balakot airstrike in retaliation to the 2019 Pulwama attack. ^[20] The Government of India did not give a figure of the number of deaths caused by the strikes. ^[21]

Union Finance Minister

Nirmala Sitharaman being given the customary Curd and Sugar by President Droupadi Murmu before Union Budget presentation on, 1 February 2025

On 31 May 2019, Nirmala Sitharaman was appointed as the finance and corporate affairs minister. ^[23] She is India's first full-time female finance minister. ^[24] She presented her maiden budget in the Indian parliament on 5 July 2019. ^{[25] [26]} During the COVID-19 pandemic in India she was made in-charge of the COVID-19 Economic Response Task Force. ^{[27] [28]} Under her tenure as the finance minister in 2022, India became the fifth largest economy in the world, and the GDP of the country was said to have seen massive growth positively with historical context. ^{[29] [30]}

She was given the same cabinet posts after the Indian general election in June 2024. ^{[31] [32]} In February 2025, she introduced the Union Budget for the eighth consecutive year, becoming the first person to do so. Overall, she has presented the budget the second-most times after Morarji Desai, who delivered it ten times across different time periods. ^{[33] [34]} She also became the first minister to present the budget in the New Parliament building of India. ^[35]

Electoral history

Position	Party		Constituency	From	To	Tenure	Ref.
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (1st Term)		BJP	Andhra Pradesh	26 June 2014	17 June 2016	1 year, 357 days	[16]
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (2nd Term)			Karnataka	1 July 2016	30 June 2022	9 years, 85 days	[18]
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (3rd Term)				1 July 2022	30 June 2028

Awards and honours

The Jawaharlal Nehru University conferred her the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2019. ^[36] Forbes Magazine has ranked her 28th among the 100 most powerful women in the world in 2024. ^[37] This was her sixth consecutive time on the list. She came in at number 34 in 2019, 41st in 2020, 37th on the list in 2021, 36th in 2022, and 32nd in 2023. ^{[38] [39]} She was also awarded the Business Reformer of the Year 2021 at the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence. ^[40]

Controversies

In June 2025, a Delhi court issued a notice to her in connection with a criminal defamation plea filed by Lipika Mitra, the wife of former AAP minister Somnath Bharti. ^[41]

Personal life

Sitharaman met her husband, economist and commentator Parakala Prabhakar, who is from Narsapuram, Andhra Pradesh, while studying at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. ^{[42] [8]} They married in 1986 and have a daughter who previously worked for The Hindu and currently works for Mint Lounge. ^{[43] [44]} Prabhakar served as the communications advisor to the Government of Andhra Pradesh from 2014 to 2018. ^[45]

See also

• List of female defence ministers
• List of female finance ministers
• Third Modi ministry

References

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29. "This chart shows the growth of India's economy". World Economic Forum. 26 September 2022. Archived from the original on 5 July 2023. Retrieved 5 July 2023.
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34. "Union Budget 2025 | Who has presented the most number of Budgets?". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 30 January 2025.
35. Bureau, The Hindu (31 January 2024). "Parliament Budget Session Live updates Day 1 | President address joint session of Parliament, both Houses adjourned till tomorrow". The Hindu. ISSN   0971-751X . Retrieved 23 September 2025.{{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)
36. Staff Reporter (12 June 2019). "Nirmala Sitharaman, Jaishankar to get JNU's Distinguished Alumni Award". The Hindu. ISSN   0971-751X. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
37. "Nirmala Sitharaman". Forbes. Archived from the original on 13 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2024.
38. PTI (7 December 2022). "Nirmala Sitharaman, 5 other Indians among Forbes World's 100 Most Powerful Women". The Hindu. ISSN   0971-751X . Retrieved 24 September 2025.
39. "The World's Most Powerful Women 2023". Forbes. 5 December 2023. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
40. "ET Business Reformer of the Year 2021: Nirmala Sitharaman-Life support and recovery, forged in the crucible of a pandemic". The Economic Times. 7 May 2022. ISSN   0013-0389 . Retrieved 24 September 2025.
41. "Notice issued to Sitharaman over defamation plea by Bharti's wife". The Times of India. 23 May 2025. ISSN   0971-8257 . Retrieved 23 May 2025.
42. "Meet the Union Finance Minister/DEPARTMENT OF Expenditure | MoF |GoI". doe.gov.in. Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
43. "Vangmayi Parakala - JLF Colorado". Jaipur Literature Festival, Colorado. 17 September 2013. Archived from the original on 8 December 2021. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
44. "Meet Vangmayi Parakala, the daughter of Nirmala Sitharaman; Know about her education, career, and more". The Financial Express. 6 June 2024. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
45. "AP govt advisor and Nirmala Sitharaman's husband Parakala Prabhakar quits, blames Jagan". The News Minute . 19 June 2018. Archived from the original on 20 November 2018. Retrieved 22 June 2018.

External links

• Nirmala Sitharaman – Biography on Elections.in

Political offices
Preceded by Anand Sharma	Minister of Commerce and Industry 2014–2017 As Minister of State (Independent Charge)	Succeeded by Suresh Prabhu
Preceded by Arun Jaitley	Minister of Defence 2017–2019	Succeeded by Rajnath Singh
	Minister of Finance 31 May 2019 – present	Incumbent
	Minister of Corporate Affairs 31 May 2019 – present