Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday surprised markets by naming Nirmala Sitharaman, formerly the country’s defence minister, as the next finance minister at a time when Asia’s third-largest economy is stuttering.
Sitharaman, 59, will become the senior most woman minister in Modi’s cabinet and the second woman to head the finance department after late former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Amit Shah, chief of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was appointed as the minister of home affairs, giving him responsibility for internal security with a control over the federal police.
Regarded as the architect of Modi’s landslide victory in the recently concluded general election, Shah replaces senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh, who will now be defence minister.
Shah had been tipped as a possible candidate for the finance ministry in recent days, but the job went to Sitharaman, who has an economics background and was briefly the junior finance minister in Modi’s first term.
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