History of Union Budgets and 11 Little-Known Facts

28 Dec 2023 , 09:11 AM

 On February 1, 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will propose the interim budget for the fiscal year 2024–25 in the Lok Sabha. Here is some background information and little-known facts regarding previous Union budgets before the budget:

1. When did India present its first Union Budget?

On April 7, 1860, Scottish politician and economist James Wilson from the East India Company presented the British Crown with the first Union Budget. Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty unveiled the nation’s first budget on November 26, 1947, marking the start of independence.

2. Printing of the budget

Up until 1950, the Budget was printed at Rashtrapati Bhavan. However, due to a leak, the printing location had to be moved to a press on Minto Road in New Delhi. A government press was established in 1980 at the finance ministry’s headquarters, the North Block.

3. The longest budget speech

The record for longest budget speech was given by FM Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2020, when she presented the Union Budget 2020–21 for two hours and forty-two minutes.

Fun Fact: She had to end the speech after two pages since she wasn’t feeling well. She requested that the speaker read the remaining portion of the speech.

She shattered her own record of two hours and seventeen minutes in July 2019—her first Budget—with this speech.

4. The budget speech with maximum word count 

In 1991, during the Narasimha Rao administration, Manmohan Singh gave the longest-lasting budget speech in history, spanning 18,650 words. Then-Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s 18,604-word speech from 2018 holds the record for the 2^nd longest speech.

5. India’s shortest budget speech

When Finance Minister Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel presented his budget in 1977, it was only eight hundred words long.

6. Who has presented the most budgets overall?

The record for the most budgets ever presented in the history of the nation is held by former prime minister Moraraji Desai. During his tenure as finance minister from 1962 to 1969, he submitted ten budgets. P Chidambaram presented nine, Pranab Mukherjee presented eight, Yashwant Sinha presented eight, and Manmohan Singh presented six.

7. Budgetary schedules

According to British custom, the Union Budget was traditionally presented at 5 p.m. on the final business day of February until 1999. Yashwant Sinha, moved the budget presentation time to 11 am in 1999.

Rather than utilising the final working day of the month as was customary during the colonial era, Arun Jaitley began presenting the Union Budget on February 1st, 2017.

8. Wording of the budget

The government headed by Congress made the decision to print the Budget documents in both Hindi and English. Otherwise, English was used to present the Union Budget until 1955.

9. Budget without paper

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the Union Budget for 2021–2022 was paperless—a first for India since independence.

10. The first Indian woman to deliver a budget

The first female Indian budget presenter was Indira Gandhi, who concurrently served as finance minister and prime minister in 1971. Sitharaman presented the budget in 2019 as the second woman to do so.

That year, Sitharaman opted to carry the speech and other documents in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ emblazoned with the National Emblem, rather than the customary budget briefcase.

11. When did the General Budget and the Railway Budget merge?

In 2017, the Railway budget was combined with the Union budget and presented together, following 92 years of separate presentations. The General Budget and the Railway Budget were presented independently up until 2017.

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