Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Breaking the record set by Morarji Desai, who tabled the Union Budget for six consecutive financial years in the 1950s-1960s, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to make history when she presents the document a seventh time in a row in the coming weeks for the financial year 2024-24 as the newly-constituted 18th Lok Sabha begins its first session on June 24.
Desai had the distinction of tabling five full budgets and one interim budget in a row when he was the Union Finance Minister from 1959 to 1964. In all, he tabled the highest number of budgets—10—in his political career spanning nearly six decades.
The veteran Gandhian also served as the fourth Prime Minister of India from March 24, 1977, to July 28, 1979.
Before Sitharaman, Arun Jaitley presented five consecutive budgets from 2014-15 to 2018-19. Before the parliamentary elections, Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget for 2019-20 on February 1, 2019. Dr Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Singh presented five budgets each.
After the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed Nirmala Sitharaman as the FM. She became the first full-time woman FM and the second female to present the budget after Indira Gandhi, who tabled the document for the financial year 1970-71.
In 2019, Sitharaman replaced the budget briefcase with a traditional “bahi-khata”, a ledger book adorned with the National Emblem to carry her speech and documents.
So far, Sitharaman has presented five full budgets and one interim budget, in February 2024, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.