Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was born on August 18, 1959, in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Since 2014, Sitharaman is serving as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of India.
She is a member of the Rajya Sabha, Upper House of the Parliament. Sitharaman formerly served as the Defence Minister of India. She is the second female minister to take charge after Sonia Gandhi.
As the finance minister marks her 62nd birthday, let’s peek into the time when she was brutally criticised.
Sitharaman made headlines in the month of December 2019 when she said she doesn't eat onions. Her remarks about personal eating habits came while responding to interruptions by some opposition members.
"I don't eat much of onion and garlic. I come from such a family which doesn't have much to do with onion," Sitharaman had said.
She was brutally trolled by the opposition and public on the internet for her statement.
It was the time when onion prices had crossed Rs 100 per kg in India. People were already angry by the fact and her statement heated the issue.
She was also accused of being rude and careless towards such an important issue.
She later stated an explanation in the Rajya Sabha saying her response was to a particular question in the debate asking her "Do you eat onions?"
"I instinctively said, 'I don't eat, and my family does not give so much importance to onion.' That becomes a major criticism of this government. This is when I have spent more than 20 minutes talking about what kind of steps this government has taken for better management of onion distribution," she had said.
