Nirmala Sitharaman - first 'full-time' woman FM

Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday broke another glass ceiling when she was appointed the Union Finance Minister – the first woman to hold the crucial portfolio as a full-time minister. Earlier, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi held the portfolio as an additional charge.

Sitharaman, 59, the Defence Minister in the previous NDA government, succeeds Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who had opted out of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new cabinet owing to ill health.

Sitharaman and Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur assumed their respective offices at the North Block on Friday afternoon, soon after President Ram Nath Kovind allocated portfolios to the ministers who had taken oath of office and secrecy on Thursday evening.

Sitharaman has assumed charge of the finance ministry at a time when the industry is expection a stimulus from the government to kickstart the flagging economy. Her first task would be to get down to prepare the Union Budget which will be presented to Parliament in July.

Before being elevated as the Defence Minister, Sitharaman had served as the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs in the previous Modi government. She was also Minister for Commerce and Industry with independent charge.

A former alumna of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Sitharaman has worked with a consulting firm in London before joining politics. After returning to India, she served as deputy director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies in Hyderabad.

Sitharaman earlier served as a national spokesperson of the BJP (BJP) and known as an articulate and aggressive spokesperson, who attacked the then Congress government over its policies.

Cabinet Ministers

Raj Nath Singh
Amit Shah
Nitin Jairam Gadkari
D. V. Sadananda Gowda
Nirmala Sitharaman
Ram Vilas Paswan
Narendra Singh Tomar
Ravi Shankar Prasad
Harsimrat Kaur Badal
Thaawar Chand Gehlot
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’
Arjun Munda
Smriti Zubin Irani
Harsh Vardhan
Prakash Javadekar
Piyush Goyal
Dharmendra Pradhan
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
Pralhad Joshi
Mahendra Nath Pandey
Arvind Ganpat Sawant
Giriraj Singh
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat

Ministers of State (Independent Charge)

Santosh Kumar Gangwar
Rao Inderjit Singh
Shripad Yesso Naik
Jitendra Singh
Kiren Rijiju
Prahalad Singh Patel
Raj Kumar Singh
Hardeep Singh Puri
Mansukh L Mandaviya

Ministers of State

Faggansingh Kulaste
Ashwini Kumar Choubey
Arjun Ram Meghwal
General (Retd.) V. K. Singh
Krishan Pal
Danve Raosaheb Dadarao
G Kishan Reddy
Parshottam Rupala
Ramdas Athawale
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti
Babul Supriyo
Sanjeev Kumar Balyan
Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao
Anurag Singh Thakur
Angadi Suresh Channabasappa
Nityanand Rai
Rattan Lal Kataria
V Muraleedharan
Renuka Singh Saruta
Som Parkash
Rameswar Teli
Pratap Chandra Sarangi
Kailash Choudhary
Debasree Chaudhuri