Budget 2024: Cabinet clears pre-election Budget 2024-25

The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday approved the pre-election budget 2024-25, sources said. Following this, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her sixth budget in the Lok Sabha. She will equal the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.

Sitharaman, the first full-time woman finance minister of the country, has presented five full budgets since July 2019 and will present an interim or vote-on-account budget on Thursday. With this, she will surpass the records of her predecessors like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five budgets in a row. Desai, as finance minister, had presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964.

The interim budget 2024-25 will be a vote-on-account that will give the government authority to spend certain sums of money till a new government comes to office after the April-May general elections.