Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will set a record for presenting the 8th consecutive budget on February 1. It is expected that measures will be taken to support the weakening economic growth in the general budget and to provide relief to the middle class struggling with inflation and stable increment. With this, Sitharaman will reach close to the records of 10 budgets presented by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai in different time periods. Desai presented a total of six budgets as Finance Minister during 1959–1964 and four budgets between 1967–1969.
India’s first full -time women finance minister
Sitharaman was made India’s first full -time female finance minister in 2019. In the same year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formed the government for the second consecutive time at the Center. Since then Sitharaman has presented seven budgets. The first general budget of independent India was presented on 26 November 1947 by the country’s first Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty. Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai has presented a total of 10 budgets as Finance Minister during the tenure of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and later Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram presented the budget on nine occasions. Pranab Mukherjee presented eight budgets during his tenure as Finance Minister.
The longest budget speech
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh presented the budget five consecutive times between 1991 and 1995, when he was the Finance Minister in the PV Narasimha Rao government. The longest budget speech Sitharaman gave two hours 40 minutes on February 1, 2020. In the year 1977, Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel’s interim budget speech is the shortest speech ever, with only 800 words. The budget was traditionally presented at 5 pm on the last day of February. The time was changed in the year 1999 and the then Finance Minister Yashwant Singh presented the budget at 11 am in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Since then the budget is presented at 11 am. After this, the date of presenting the budget in 2017 was changed to February 1, so that the government could complete the process of parliamentary approval by the end of March.
(With PTI/language input)
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