Days Before Presenting Her First Budget, Nirmala Sitharaman Meets Former PM Manmohan Singh
NEW DELHI :nion Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his residence in Delhi on Thursday, days before presenting the Union Budget. Sitharamn on July 5 will present her first Budget after taking charge as the Finance Minister. There was no official statement on what transpired at the meeting.
Singh was the finance minister in the PM Narasimha Rao government from from 1991 to 1996. He was also the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1982 to 1985 and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India from 1985 to 1987.
It will be her first budget after taking charge as Finance Minister last month following a landslide win in the national election for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dr Manmohan Singh is widely recognised for the economic reforms which he announced in 1991 when he was the finance minister in the Narasimha Rao government.
Sources in the Finance Ministry said Ms Sitharaman’s visit was a courtesy call. This is her first meeting with Mr Singh after taking charge of the ministry.
It is the first time in nearly thirty years that Manmohan Singh, 86, is not in parliament during the budget session after his tenure of nearly three decades as a Rajya Sabha member ended earlier this month. Dr Singh had once said that he was not only an “accidental prime minister” of India but also the country’s “accidental ‘finance minister”. “I have been termed as an accidental prime minister of the country, but I think that I was also an accidental finance minister,” he said after the launch of his book Changing India in December last year.
D-C9AjSUwAAvP3HMs Sitharaman, 59, is India’s first full time woman finance minister. Former prime minister Indira Gandhi held the portfolio too, but as additional charge.
