Union Budget 2025: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman prepared a new team and presented the country's budget, know who is behind the scenes?..

The budget of the Narendra Modi government 3.0 at the Center is going to be presented in the Lok Sabha on February 1. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the 14th budget of the Modi government on Saturday, February 1, after the Modi government came to power in 2014. This will be the first full budget of this government after the formation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party in July last year in 2024.

Apart from the Secretary of Economic Affairs and the Chief Economic Advisor, a whole new team of officials is helping Sitharaman to prepare the strategy for the upcoming budget. Here we are telling you about those officials who are closely associated with the budget making process.

Nirmala Sitharaman

Sitharaman will be the first Finance Minister of the country to present the eighth consecutive budget including an interim budget. Earlier, Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha have presented 5 consecutive budgets as Finance Minister. Sitharaman has studied economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. In the first term of the Modi government, she has handled the Ministry of Commerce and Defense. Sitharaman is a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka. Nirmala Sitharaman is going to present the budget for 2025-26 at a time when global uncertainty is increasing, domestic demand is sluggish, and private investment is yet to pick up pace. It is expected that in this budget the Finance Minister will give some tax relief to the middle class.

Tuhin Kant Pandey

Finance Secretary Tuhin Kant Pandey recently took over as Revenue Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. Pandey is a 1987 batch Odisha cadre IAS officer. Pandey worked for more than 5 years after taking over as DIPAM Secretary on October 24, 2019. Pandey is credited with completing the sale of state-run airline Air India, which was stuck for a long time. As DIPAM Secretary, he has also played an important role in bringing Life Insurance Corporation of India to the stock market.

Manoj Goel

Manoj Goel, a 1991 batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, has been the Expenditure Secretary in the Ministry of Finance since August 2024. Before this, he was the Secretary of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. During his tenure of more than three decades, he has been the Principal Secretary in-charge of Finance and Commercial Tax in the Madhya Pradesh government. As Expenditure Secretary, Goel will hold many responsibilities including approving new schemes, preparing expenditure guidelines and transfer of resources to the states.

Ajay Seth

Ajay Seth, a 1987 batch Karnataka batch IAS officer, has been holding the charge of Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance since April 2021. The DEA Secretary plays an important role in the budget-making process. These include fiscal planning, inter-ministerial coordination, and policy making. Seth is credited with initiating India's first sovereign green bond issue and the creation of the Infrastructure Finance Secretariat.

Arunish Chawla

Arunish Chawla, a 1992 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, took over as Secretary, Department of Disinvestment and Public Asset Management on January 8 after serving as Revenue Secretary for 15 days. Chawla also temporarily took charge in the Department of Public Enterprises and Ministry of Culture. As DIPAM Secretary, Chawla will look after several other government initiatives including disinvestment, monetization and sale of IDBI Bank.

M. Nagaraju

M. Nagaraju, a 1993 batch IAS officer of the Tripura cadre, was appointed as Secretary in the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance on August 19, 2024. He will be one of the key persons advising the Finance Minister in this budget on the regulation of fintech, financial inclusion, and creation of digital financial infrastructure. Nagaraju, a post-graduate from the University of Hyderabad, has previously held the posts of Secretary to Principal Secretary in important departments like Health, Women and Child Development, Finance, Commerce, and Industry. Nagaraju has also worked as an advisor to the Executive Director of the World Bank in Washington between 2008 and 2012.

V. Anant Nageswaran

India's Chief Economic Adviser V Anant Nageswaran is a writer and teacher. He is one of Sitharaman's closest advisors. He has a role in preparing the macroeconomic background of the budget, based on which budget targets are set and the budget speech is written. The CEA along with his team of economists writes the Economic Review, which is to be presented in Parliament a day before the budget is presented (31 January). Nageswaran's 3-year term is going to end this financial year. Nageswaran has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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