Nirmala Sitharaman is going to present the interim budget on 1 February. With this budget, she will become the first woman Finance Minister of India, who will have the record of presenting the budget the most number of times. Along with this, another record will also be made. Let us know.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is going to present the budget for the sixth consecutive time on February 1. This time the budget will not be a complete budget because Lok Sabha elections are going to be held in 2024. Therefore, the government will present an interim budget to meet the pre-election expenses. It is presented every time before the Lok Sabha elections. With this, she will be the second Finance Minister of the country to present five consecutive full budgets and one interim budget. Till now this achievement is only in the name of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
five year budget
With Sitharaman presenting the interim budget on February 1, she will leave behind the records of former finance ministers like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha. These leaders had presented five consecutive budgets. As Finance Minister, Desai presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959–1964. The interim budget for the financial year 2024-25 to be presented on February 1 will be voted on account. This will give the government the right to spend on certain items until the new government comes after the general elections in April-May.
Since general elections are about to be held, there is no possibility of any major policy changes in Sitharaman's interim budget. The Finance Minister had denied any major announcement in the interim budget at a program last month. He said that this would only be a vote on account before the general elections. After passing in the Parliament, the Vote on Account will allow the government to withdraw funds on a proportionate basis from the Consolidated Fund of the country to meet the expenditure for the April-July period. After the general elections, the new government is likely to be formed around June. In such a situation, the new government will bring the full budget for 2024-25 in July.
Rules set for interim budget
Generally, the interim budget does not contain major policy announcements, but there is no bar on the government from taking such steps which are necessary to deal with the issues facing the economy. After the Modi government came to power in 2014, Arun Jaitley took charge of the Finance Ministry and presented five consecutive budgets from 2014–15 to 2018–19. In the year 2017, the government decided to present the budget on a date instead of the last working day of February. With this, the colonial era tradition of presenting the budget on 28 February was ended. Piyush Goyal, who was holding additional charge of the ministry due to Jaitley's ill health, presented the interim budget on February 1, 2019.
Goyal had increased the standard deduction for salaried taxpayers from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. Also, for taxpayers whose annual taxable income does not exceed Rs 5 lakh, the tax exemption was increased from Rs 2,500 to Rs 12,500. Modi government handed over the responsibility of Finance Department to Sitharaman after the 2019 general elections. She became the second woman after Indira Gandhi to present the budget. Indira Gandhi presented the budget for the financial year 1970-71. That year, Sitharaman did away with the traditional briefcase used for budget documents and replaced it with a ledger bearing the national emblem.
India's economy will be this big by 2027-28
India is moving forward with the aim of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2027-28 and a $30 trillion economy by 2047. Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai presented the budget maximum 10 times. He had presented budgets six times consecutively, including the interim budget. The first budget of independent India was presented by the first Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty. Sitharaman, who is presenting her sixth budget, can take some measures to promote rural areas. One of the main reasons for this is that the growth rate of the agriculture sector is expected to decline from four percent to 1.8 percent in the financial year 2023-24.
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