Nirmala Sitharaman is an Indian politician with the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), and has served as Minister of Finance and Minister of Corporate Affairs since 2019 (this is as of March 2024). In the first Modi government, Sitharaman served as the Minister of Defence between 2017 and 2019, thereby becoming India’s second female defence minister and the second female finance minister after Indira Gandhi, and the first full-time female minister to hold each of those portfolios.
Sitharaman first joined the BJP in 2004 and was appointed party spokesperson six years later. She was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2014. While presenting her first budget, she made a statement by replacing the traditional budget briefcase with a ‘bahi-khata’ with the National Emblem to carry the speech and other documents.
Shouldn’t a decision on disinvestment be based on how it may benefit the entity/entities in which the stake sale would be carried out rather than simply to prove a point about the commitment to privatization? The recent approval granted to separately list NTPC’s green energy arm is good proof of the pragmatism at play with regard to unlocking value at well-run state-owned companies.