Nirmala Sitharaman only woman in Modi cabinet to be sworn in as minister for third term

CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Nirmala Sitharaman, who joined the likes of Arun Jaitley and Manmohan Singh by serving a full term as Finance Minister and is credited with carrying forward second-generation reforms, created a record by being the first woman to be sworn in as minister for the third consecutive term of the Modi government.

Being a fiery spokesperson of the BJP, she was inducted into the Cabinet when Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of the NDA government in 2014.

As a staunch defender of the Modi government’s economic policies and executor, she created a record when she was appointed as the first female Raksha Mantri, or Defence Minister, in 2017. Prior to that, she was industry and commerce minister.

When her mentor Arun Jaitley took ill, Sitharaman was given the charge of the finance portfolio in the newly re-elected Modi government after the 2019 general elections, when BJP won its highest seats of 303.

She became the first full-time woman Finance Minister in Independent India. Earlier, Indira Gandhi had held finance as an additional portfolio for a short duration when she was the prime minister of India.

Soon after taking over, the first major reform was a cut in base corporate tax to 22 per cent from 30 per cent to prop up the economy hit by demonetisation and GST implementation.

The following year, India weathered the Covid-19 pandemic with an array of policy measures announced for the poor and continued its tag of the fastest growing major economy and a ‘bright spot’ in the world economy.

To overcome the hardship during the pandemic, the government announced a special economic package worth Rs 20 lakh crore equivalent to roughly 10 per cent of India’s GDP.

She steered the economy from nearly 24 per cent contraction in the first quarter of FY21 to the fastest growing world economy.

Despite fiscal expansion, she continued to follow the path of fiscal consolidation and was successful in bringing down the fiscal deficit to 5.6 per cent of GDP from the earlier estimate of 5.8 per cent in FY24.