Budget 2024: History and 11 lesser-known facts about Union Budgets

Budget 2024 date: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the interim budget for fiscal year 2024–25 on February 1, 2024, in the Lok Sabha. Ahead of the Budget, here is a history and lesser-known facts about past Union Budgets:

1.When was the first Union Budget presented in India?

The first Union Budget was introduced in India on April 7, 1860, when Scottish economist and politician James Wilson from East India Company presented it to the British Crown. The first budget of Independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.

2. Budget printing

The Budget till 1950 was printed at the Rashtrapati Bhavan till it got leaked, and the venue of printing had to be shifted to a press at Minto Road in New Delhi. In 1980, a government press was set up in the North Block, the seat of the finance ministry.

3. Longest budget speech

Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for delivering the longest Budget speech when the FM spoke for 2 hours and 42 minutes while presenting the Union Budget 2020–21 on February 1, 2020.

Fun Fact: With two pages still remaining, she had to cut short the speech as she felt unwell. She asked the speaker to consider the remaining part of the speech as read.
With this speech, she broke her own record of July 2019—her first Budget—when she delivered a 2-hour and 17-minute speech.

4. Most words in Budget speech

At 18,650 words, under the Narasimha Rao government, Manmohan Singh delivered the longest Budget speech in terms of words in 1991. In 2018, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's speech with 18,604 words was the second-longest in terms of word count. Jaitley spoke for 1 hour and 49 minutes.

5. Shortest budget speech in India

It lasted just 800 words when finance minister Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel delivered his Budget in 1977.

6. Who has presented the maximum number of Budgets?

Former PM Moraraji Desai holds the record for presenting the most number of Budgets in the history of the country. He had presented 10 Budgets during his stint as the finance minister from 1962 to 1969, followed by P Chidambaram (9), Pranab Mukherjee (8), Yashwant Sinha (8), and Manmohan Singh (6).

7.Budget timings

Until 1999, the Union Budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of February as per British era practice. In 1999, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed the budget presentation timing to 11 am.

In 2017, Arun Jaitley started presenting the Union Budget on February 1, departing from the colonial-era tradition of using the last working day of that month.

8. Budget language

However, the Congress-led government decided to print the Budget papers in both Hindi and English. Otherwise, until 1955, the Union Budget was presented in English.

9. Paperless budget

Union Budget for 2021-22 was paperless because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a first in independent India.

10. First woman to present Budget in India

In 1971, the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who also held the portfolio of Finance Minister, became the first woman to present a Budget in India. In 2019, Sitharaman became the second woman to present the Budget.

That year, Sitharaman did away with the traditional budget briefcase and instead went for a traditional 'bahi-khata' with the National Emblem to carry the speech and other documents.

11. When was the Railway Budget merged with the General Budget?

After being presented separately for 92 years, the Railway budget was merged with the Union Budget in 2017 and presented together. Till 2017, the Railway Budget and the General Budget were presented separately.

(With PTI inputs)

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