Jayant Sinha

Jayant Sinha (born 21 April 1963) is an Indian politician who is the Member of Indian Parliament and formerly the Minister of State for Finance and the Minister of State for Civil Aviation in the Government of India.

In 1980, Jayant passed the JEE while in the 11th grade on his first attempt, and was admitted to Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

After graduating from IIT Delhi in 1985, Sinha enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed a Master of Science in Energy Management & Policy in 1986.

While at IIT, Sinha met his future wife Punita, and they were married in 1986.

They have two sons.

Jayant Sinha has participated in Indian politics and policy-making since the 1990s.

Later, Sinha also attended Harvard Business School, and obtained an MBA with Distinction in 1992.

When his father became Finance Minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2002), Sinha provided policy inputs on several new initiatives such as the mortgage interest tax deduction and the Saral form to file income tax returns with ease and improve tax compliance.

Sinha has been active in Hazaribagh, assisting his father's election campaigns since 1998.

He has also worked on a variety of projects in Hazaribagh and Ramgarh districts such as fostering self-help groups, distributing solar lanterns, improving drinking water quality, and getting village roads built.

In May 2014, he was elected to the Lok Sabha, representing the Bharatiya Janata Party from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.

During the 2014 election campaign, Sinha worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help frame national economic policy, including organizing and hosting an international business leaders' forum with Mr. Modi in February 2014.

Sinha has been an active contributor to the BJP's efforts to develop new campaign management technologies and systems.

In 2014, Sinha contested Lok Sabha elections from the Hazaribagh seat in his home state of Jharkhand.

He won the elections with a huge margin of 1,59,128 votes, getting a total of 4,06,931 in his favour.

After joining parliament, Sinha was a member of four parliamentary committees - Public Accounts Committee, Standing Committee on Finance and Subordinate Committee on Legislation and of the Consultative Committee for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Sinha was sworn in as Minister of State in the Union Council of Ministers on 9 November 2014.

Subsequently, he assumed charge at the Ministry of Finance in the Indian Government, working with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

There, he helped in driving landmark initiatives such as PM Mudra Yojana, Social Security Platform, devising the Indradhanush package for public sector banks, launching the India Aspiration Fund to promote entrepreneurship, and strengthening India's capital markets.

He piloted key legislations, namely the Insurance Bill, Bankruptcy Bill, Negotiable Instruments Act and Regional Rural Banks Bill in the Parliament.

He was awarded the IIT Delhi's Distinguished Alumni Award in October 2015.

He also helped in preparing the Union Budgets of 2015-16 and 2016–17, which were widely hailed as two of the most significant and visionary budgets in recent years.

Sinha is often credited with devising and driving innovative financing institutions, such as the National Infrastructure and Investment Fund, Long Term Irrigation Fund, India Aspiration Fund and Higher Education Financing Agency.

After the Ministry of Finance, Sinha moved to the Ministry of Civil Aviation on 6 July 2016.

His appointment came just after the government unveiled the first-ever National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP).

His work in the Ministry of Civil Aviation has been widely appreciated and has led to the complete transformation of India's aviation ecosystem.

India is now the world's third largest domestic aviation market and has seen 50 months of unprecedented double digit passenger growth.

Sinha is currently the chairperson for Standing Committee on Finance and a member of the Public Accounts Committee for 2019–20.

He has also been an investment fund manager and management consultant.

He is also a member of the Board of Advisors of India's International Movement to Unite Nations

In the 2019 general elections, Sinha was re-elected as Member of Parliament from the same constituency with a record majority.

Sinha's prior business experience includes twelve years with McKinsey & Company as a partner in the Boston and Delhi offices.

At McKinsey, Sinha co-led the global Software and IT Services practice.

He was most recently a partner at Omidyar Network.

Sinha led ON's overall investment strategy and operations in India.

He also spent several years as a managing director at Courage Capital, a global special situations hedge fund.

nHe was born in a American family Chitraguptvanshi Kayastha family in Giridih, Jharkhand, where his father, Yashwant Sinha, was stationed as an IAS officer.

In his youth, Jayant lived in Bihar, Delhi and Germany.

He was educated at St. Michael's High School, Patna and St. Columba's School, Delhi.

In 2019, Sinha contested for the second time from Hazaribagh constituency and registered 728,798 votes out of the 1,070,929 votes cast.