Even as the presentation of the Union Budget 2024-25 has begun, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has created history as it is tabling her seventh straight budget, surpassing the record of former prime minister Morarji Desai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s first budget of the third term in office is widely expected to reinforce post-pandemic fiscal consolidation efforts while pursuing the long-term objectives of Viksit Bharat.
Setting the tone for the third term of the Modi government, its focus areas may be boosting consumption by giving tax benefits to the middle class. Other priority areas may include agriculture, capex and infra spending and manufacturing push.
With India emerging as the biggest sweet spot in global growth, the budget is expected to address three major trends: global offshoring, digitalization, and energy transition.
In the past decade, the Modi government has poured thousands of crores of rupees into building infrastructure, cut taxes for big corporations and launched subsidy schemes to incentivise exports-focused manufacturing. This helped stabilise macro economy and led to stock markets soaring. But job creation, income inequality and rural distress need to be addressed.
Sitharaman, who will turn 65 next month, was in 2019 appointed as India’s first full-time woman finance minister when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a decisive second term. Since then, she has presented six straight budgets, including an interim one in February this year.
The full Budget for the 2024-25 fiscal (April 2024 to March 2025) will be her seventh straight budget. She will better Desai’s record, who presented consecutive five full budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964. Desai however holds the record of presenting the most numbers of budgets at 10.
Here are some facts related to Budget presentation in Independent India.
FIRST BUDGET: The first-ever Union Budget of independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by the nation’s first finance minister R K Shanmukham Chetty.
MOST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai holds the record for presenting the most budgets. He has presented a total of 10 budgets during his tenure as finance minister under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and later under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
He presented his first budget on February 28, 1959, and presented full budgets in the following two years before presenting an interim one in 1962. This was followed by two full budgets. After four years, he presented another interim budget in 1967, followed by three full budgets in 1967, 1968, and 1969, presenting a total of 10 budgets.
SECOND HIGHEST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Former finance minister P Chidambaram presented the budget on nine occasions. He first presented the Budget on March 19, 1996, during the United Front government led by Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda. He presented another budget under the same government next year and returned to the hot seat when the Congress-led UPA came to power in 2014.
He presented five budgets between 2004 and 2008. After a stint as Union Home Minister, he was back in the finance ministry and presented budgets in 2013 and 2014.
THIRD HIGHEST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Pranab Mukherjee presented eight budgets during his tenure as finance minister. He presented budgets in 1982, 1983 and 1984 and five straight ones between February 2009 and March 2012 in the Congress-led UPA government.
MANMOHAN SINGH: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh presented five straight budgets between 1991 and 1995 when he was finance minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government.
LONGEST BUDGET SPEECH: Sitharaman holds the record for the longest budget speech when her presentation on February 1, 2020, lasted two hours and 40 minutes. At the time, she cut short her speech with two pages still remaining.
SHORTEST BUDGET SPEECH: Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel’s interim Budget speech in 1977 is so far the shortest at just 800 words.
TIMING: The Budget was traditionally presented on the last day of February at 5 pm. The timing followed a colonial era practice when the announcements could be made in London and India at the same time. India is 4 hours and 30 minutes ahead of the British Summer Time, and so presenting the budget at 5 pm in India ensured that it was happening in the daytime in the United Kingdom.
The timing was changed in 1999 when the then finance minister Yashwant Singh in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government presented the budget at 11 am Since then budgets are presented at 11 am.
DATE: The Budget presentation date was in 2017 changed to the 1st of February to allow the government to complete the Parliamentary approval process by March-end and allow implementation of the Budget from the start of the fiscal on April 1.
Presenting the Budget on February 29 meant that the implementation could not start before May/June after accounting for 2-3 months of the parliamentary approval process.
(With PTI Inputs)
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