Overview
Nirmala Sitharaman (born 18 August 1959) is an Indian economist and politician serving as the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs since 2019. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), she previously served as the Defence Minister and is a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha.
Born into a Tamil family in Madurai, Sitharaman obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College in 1980, followed by a Master of Arts in Economics and a Master of Philosophy from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1984. She briefly worked in various roles in the United Kingdom before returning to India. From 2003 to 2005, she served as a member of the National Commission for Women.
Sitharaman joined the BJP in 2008 and served as a national spokesperson for the party from 2010 to 2014. In May 2014, she was appointed Minister of State with independent charge of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in the First Modi ministry, a position she held till September 2017. She also held the role of Minister of State in the Finance and Corporate Affairs ministries briefly from May to November 2014. She was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh in June 2014, and subsequently from Karnataka in July 2016.
On 3 September 2017, Sitharaman was appointed the 28th Defence Minister of India. On 30 May 2019, she was appointed Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs in the Second Modi ministry. She was reappointed to the position in the Third Modi ministry in June 2024, following the National Democratic Alliance's victory in the 2024 Indian general election. She is the first woman to hold the positions of Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance on a full-time basis. In July 2025, she became the longest continuously serving Indian Finance Minister, surpassing C. D. Deshmukh.
References
Adapted from the English Wikipedia article on Nirmala