Nirmala Sitharaman takes charge as Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs;Thakur takes charge as Minister of State

NEW DELHI: Nirmala Sitharaman has assumed charge as the Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs here.nnShe was greeted at the office in North Block by Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs designate,Anurag Singh Thakur, Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg and other Secretaries of the Ministry.nnSitharaman is the first woman appointed as the full-time Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs.nnAfter assuming the charge, the Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs was briefed on the key initiatives and policy issues by the Secretaries of the different departments of the Ministry of Finance & Corporate Affairs and was apprised of the ongoing issues and the forthcoming challenges facing the Indian economy among others.nnBRIEF PROFILE:nnSitharaman has served as the Union Defence Minister since 2017. She is currently a Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) from Karnataka.nnIn 2014, she was elected as Rajya Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh. She has also served as the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs and later the Minister for Commerce and Industry with Independent Charge.nnAs the Defence Minister,Sitharaman is credited with expediting the decision-making process relating to procurement in defence sector. She constituted a Defence Planning Committee to formulate an ?action plan? to effectively overcome with various security challenges facing the nation.nnSitharaman joined the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) in 2008 and has served as a national spokesperson for the party since 2010.nnSitharaman was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, on August 18, 1959. She completed her graduation from Seethalakshmi Ramasamy College, Tiruchirappalli and obtained her M.A. (Economics) from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.