1). Nirmala Sitharaman (born 18 August 1959) is an Indian politician of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), serving as the Minister of Defence since 2017 and has served as Member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, since 2016.

2). Sitharaman is India’s second female defense minister. She has served as the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs under the Ministry of Finance and the Minister for Commerce and Industry with independent charge. Prior to that, she has served as a national spokesperson for the BJP.

3). She was born on 18th August 1959 in Madurai, Tamil Nadu to middle-class parents Shri Narayan Sitharaman and Smt. Savitri. Nirmala Sitharaman’s father worked in Railways while her mother was a homemaker.

4). She inherited her father’s discipline and her mother’s love for books. While studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), she met Parakala Prabhakar and later got married to him in 1986 and moved to London. Dr. Parakala Prabhakar is an alumnus of the London School of Economics (LSE) and JNU.

Dr. Prabhakar was from a pre-congress family while Nirmala Sitharaman had an inclination towards the Bhartiya Janata Party. However, in 1991, Nirmala Sitharaman and Dr. Prabhakar returned to India and moved to Narsapuram in the coastal Andhra Pradesh. Later they were blessed with a daughter and settled in Hyderabad.

5).Education – Nirmala Seetaraman completed her schooling and bachelors from Seethalakshmi Ramaswamy College, Tiruchirappalli. Later on, she pursued her Masters in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru (JNU) University, Delhi in 1980.

6). She also has a Ph.D. in the Indo-European textile trade within the GATT framework and M.Phil. She established a school in Hyderabad called Pranava School.

7.)Political Career In 2006 -Sitharaman joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). She was made a member of the National Executive. It was in Nitin Gadkari’s tenure that Nirmala Sitharaman was appointed as one of the six-party spokespersons headed by Ravi Shankar Prasad in March 2010.
She is a BJP leader from a family Congress supporters. Sitharaman joined BJP in 2006 while her husband had joined the Prajarajyam Party floated by film star Chiranjeevi in 2007.

8). After the historic win of the BJP in 2014 General Elections, Nirmala Sitharaman was appointed as the Minister of State (independent charge) for Commerce & Industry as well as MOS for Finance and Corporate Affairs.

9).In June 2014, Nirmala Sitharaman was unanimously elected to the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh. She became the second women Defense Minister of India in a recent cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi held on 3rd Sept’17.

10). Nirmala Sitharaman is appointed as India’s first full-time Defense Minister. She is the second woman to be part of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).