Nirmala Sitharaman Begins Second Term As Finance Minister

Nirmala Sitharaman assumed her position as Finance Minister on Wednesday, marking her second consecutive term in the role.

Sitharaman is the first woman to serve as a minister in three consecutive terms of the Modi government. She joined the Cabinet when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014.

In 2017, she became India's first female Defence Minister. Before that, she served as Industry and Commerce Minister.

Following Arun Jaitley's illness, Sitharaman took over the finance portfolio after the 2019 general elections, in which the BJP won 303 seats. She became the first full-time female Finance Minister in Independent India, with Indira Gandhi having briefly held the finance portfolio as an additional charge.

One of her first actions as Finance Minister was to reduce the base corporate tax rate from 30% to 22%.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government announced a special economic package worth Rs 20 lakh crore, about 10% of India's GDP. Sitharaman helped steer the economy from a 24% contraction in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021 to becoming the fastest-growing major economy.

She also reduced the fiscal deficit to 5.6% of GDP from 5.8% in the previous fiscal year.

With PTI inputs.