IN PICTURES | Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and MoS Anurag Thakur take charge at the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Affairs

Minutes after being appointed as the new Finance Minister in the PM Modi Cabinet 2.0, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharman has taken up her new charge.

Sitharaman, who is the first woman to be appointed Finance Minister (Indira Gandhi had held the portfolio while she was Prime Minister) just as she was the first woman Defence Minister, took charge with Anurag Thakur, the newly-appointed Minister of State (MoS) in the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Affairs. Along with them were secretaries in the Finance Ministry, namely DEA secretary Subhash Chandra Garg and Finance Secretary Rajeev Kumar.

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Both Anurag Thakur and Nirmala Sitharaman had taken oath the previous day at Rashtrapati Bhavan:

The portfolio list of the 58 ministers who took their oaths-of-office at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday was announced by President Ram Nath Kovind on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at midday on Friday.

Apart from Nirmala Sitharaman, Amit Shah has been given the charge of the Ministry of Home Affairs, with Nitin Gadkari as the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Minister of Water Resources, MSMEs and former foreign secretary S Jaishankar as the new Minister of External Affairs, among others. 

In the first Modi cabinet, before becoming the first full-time woman defence minister of India in September 2017, Nirmala Sitharaman had handled the offices of MoS in the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Independent charge) of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Anurag Thakur, meanwhile, is the current BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh's Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency having won the election to the seat for the fourth time in the 2019 Lok Sabha election by defeating Ram Lal Thakur by a margin of four lakh votes. 

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