Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the sixth budget in a row on February 1. Thus, she will equal the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Being the first full-fledged woman finance minister in the country, she has introduced five full-fledged budgets since July 2019. Next week will be the sixth if the provisional or vote-on-account budget is presented. Morarji Desai as Finance Minister introduced five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959-to 1964. Meanwhile, Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P. Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha have also presented the budget five times in a row so far. Now Nirmala Sitharaman will surpass their record.
Interim Budget Because..: Usually the budget presented before the general election is called Interim or Vote on Account Budget. After the election, the government submits this vote-on-account budget for permission to incur certain types of expenditure until the new government is in place and a full-fledged budget is introduced. Meanwhile, since the general elections are going to be held in April-May this year, Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the vote-on-account budget on February 1.
Since 2014..
- Arun Jaitley took charge as the Finance Minister when the Narendra Modi-led government came to power in 2014. He introduced five consecutive budgets from 2014-15 to 2018-19.
- Later, Piyush Goyal was given additional charge as Finance Minister due to Jaitley’s health problems. Goyal presented the interim budget for 2019-20.
- In 2019, Nirmala Sitharaman became the Finance Minister after the government came to power for the second time under the leadership of Narendra Modi.
- After Indira Gandhi, Nirmala Sitharaman is the second woman to present the budget in the country. Indira Gandhi presented the budget for the financial year 1970-71.
- Nirmala Sitharaman has also done away with the tradition of Finance Minister attending Parliament with a briefcase on the day of budget presentation.
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