Interim Budget 2024: From the time of Indira Gandhi to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and what exactly is it?

29 Dec 2023 , 11:32 AM

Union Budget for 2024–2025: Next year will mark the presentation of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s sixth Union Budget. The date of the budget’s presentation is February 1, 2024. However, the FM will be presenting a ‘Interim Budget’ in Parliament because the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which runs from April 2024 to March 2025, coincides with the Lok Sabha elections. Later in July 2024, the new government will unveil its updated budget.

What precisely is an interim budget, then? When a government is in transition or nearing the end of its term, it presents an interim budget, which is a temporary budget that usually comes before general elections.

Usually, interim budgets are introduced during election years. Before the Lok Sabha elections in May 2019, the most recent one was given in February 2019.

Looking back, the Parliament has seen the presentation of eleven interim budgets between the time of Indira Gandhi (1966–1984) and PM Narendra Modi (2014–present). Before 1966, three more interim budgets were submitted, bringing the total to 14 interim budgets to date.

It should be mentioned that on November 26, 1947, RK Shanmukham Chetty, India’s first finance minister, delivered the country’s first budget after gaining independence.

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