Nirmala Sitharaman served as a member of the National Commission for Women from 2003 to 2005.[14]
Nirmala Sitharaman joined BJP in 2008. She was a national spokesperson of the party till 2014. In 2014, she was inducted into Narendra Modi's cabinet as a junior minister and was elected in June of that year as a Rajya Sabha Member from Andhra Pradesh.[15][16][17]
In May 2016, she was one of the 12 candidates nominated by the BJP to contest the Rajya Sabha elections due on 11 June. She successfully contested her seat from Karnataka.[18]
She has served as the Defence Minister of India and headed the Balakot Air Strike carried out by the Indian Air Force in 2019. She is currently serving as the Minister of Finance and Corporate affairs of India and has presented five annual budgets of India (as of 2023).
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][20]
Under her tenure, the army conducted the Balakot airstrike in retaliation to the 2019 Pulwama attack. The Indian army claimed that the operation had killed at least 170 JEM terrorists.[21][22]
Union Finance Minister
Sitharaman as Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs in New Delhi, 31 May 2019
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] Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2020–21 on 1 February 2020.[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]
In February 2024, she presented the Union budget for the record 6th time and matched it with Morarji Desai. She also became the first minister to present the budget in the New Parliament building of India.[31]
She was given the same cabinet posts after the Indian general election in June 2024.[32][33]
Non-political career
Nirmala Sitharaman worked as a salesperson at Habitat, a home decor store in London's Regent Street.[34] 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)[35] for PWC and briefly at the BBC World Service.[16]
She has also served as a member of National Commission for Women.[36] In 2017, she was one of the founding directors of Pranava in Hyderabad