[10] Sinha resigned from the Indian Administrative Service in 1984 and joined active politics as a member of the Janata Party.

He was appointed All-India General secretary of the party in 1986 and was elected Member of the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian Parliament) in 1988.

[3] In his autobiography Drohkaal ka Pathik, released in November 2013, former MP Pappu Yadav alleged that three MPs of his Indian Federal Democratic Party got money from the then finance minister Sinha, to join the NDA in 2001.

[15][16][17][18][19] On 4 April 2017, Sinha was detained in Hazaribagh district along with BJP MLA Manish Jaiswal and 150 others after trying to hold a religious procession.

Sinha, during his tenure, was forced to roll back some of his government's major policy initiatives for which he was much criticised.

[21] Still, Sinha is widely credited with pushing through several major reform measures that put the Indian economy on a firm growth trajectory.

Sinha is also known for being the first Finance Minister to break the 53-year tradition of presenting the Indian budget at 5 pm local time, a practice held over from British Rule days that sought to present the Indian budget at a time convenient to the British Parliament (1130am GMT) rather than India's Parliament.

Sinha has written a comprehensive account of his years as Finance Minister titled Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer.

[22] Yashwant Sinha has been accused by opponents, and by other political observers of trying to promote nepotism by nominating his son Jayant Sinha as a successor to contest from Hazaribagh overlooking the interests of many other loyal party workers, though he tried to justify the nomination of his son as a party decision.

[23] In 2015, he was awarded Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, the highest civilian distinction of France.

[25][26] Sinha was born in a Bihari kayastha family and has a wide range of interests including reading, gardening and meeting people.