Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the sixth consecutive budget on February 1. Along with this, he will have many records in his name. She will equal the record held by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai of presenting five consecutive full budgets and one interim budget. Also, Sitharaman is the first full-time woman Finance Minister, who has presented five full budgets since July 2019 and will present the Vote on Account i.e. interim budget next week.
Will leave these leaders behind
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.
There will be no major announcement in the interim budget
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 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. 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.
Jaitley had presented five budgets
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.
Goyal had made these announcements
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.
Second woman finance minister after Indira
Modi government handed over the responsibility of Finance Department to Sitharaman in its second term 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.
He presented the budget 10 times
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. This is the highest budget presented by any Finance Minister. 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 agricultural sector is expected to decline from four percent to 1.8 percent in the financial year 2023-24.
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