By Nandini Das
CNBC-TV18.com
Published July 22, 2024
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Budget for fiscal year 2024-25 on July 23, 2024.
She presented an interim budget on February 1 this year owing to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Here are some interesting facts you should know about the past budget's.
India's first post-independence budget was presented by former FM RK Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947. The country's first budget was presented by James Wilson on April 7, 1860.
Ex Prime Minister Moraraji Desai presented 10 budgets between 1962 to 1969. He still holds the record for the most budget proposals.
Sitharaman in 2019 made a decision to break away from the colonial tradition to carry a Gladstone box to Parliament and opted for Bahi Khata or cloth ledger. This was followed by a major technological shift to paperless budget in 2021.
In 1950, budget documents were leaked from the Rashtrapati Bhavan Press. Since, 1980, the Budget printing was relocated to the basement of the North Block.
In 1999, former FM Yashwant Sinha changed the budget time to 11 am from 5 pm. In 2017, Arun Jaitley moved the presentation date to February 1 from the last working day of February.
Sitharaman holds the record for the longest Budget speech at 2 hours and 40 minutes in FY 2020-21. Manmohan Singh's Budget speech in 1991 has the highest word count at 18,604 words. The shortest Budget speech, with just 800 words, was delivered by Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel in 1977.
During the 1955-56 budget presentation, Ex FM CD Deshmukh initiated the practice of printing the Budget-related documents in both English as well as Hindi. Earlier it was printed only in English.
In 2016 the railway budget got included to the union budget. Arun Jaitley, presented the first combined Budget for the fiscal year 2017-18.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi are the only Prime Ministers to have presented a Budget
The lock-in that follows the ‘halwa ceremony’ is observed to maintain secrecy around the budget.