The first part of Parliament's Budget Session is likely to be held between January 31 and February 13.
Credit: iStock photo
New Delhi: The Budget Session of Parliament will start on January 31 and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Budget—for a record eighth time in a row—the next day.
The first part of the Session will conclude on February 13 while the second part of the Session will begin March 10 and end on April 4. During the recess, Parliamentary Standing Committees will examine the Demands for Grants of various ministries.
There will be 27 sittings of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha during the Session.
The session will start with the customary address by President Droupadi Murmu on January 31, followed by the government tabling the Economic Survey in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
After the Budget is presented on February 1, which falls on Saturday, both the Houses will first take up discussion on the Motion of Thanks to the President's Address in both Houses on February 3.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will reply to the debate in both the Houses. After this debate is concluded, there will be a general discussion on the Budget.
In the midst of session, the voting for the Delhi Assembly will be held on February 5 and votes will be counted three days later.
Nirmala will be creating a record of presenting eight consecutive budgets on February 1. In July when she presented the Budget after the Lok Sabha elections, she had equalled a feat previously achieved only by C D Deshmukh 68 years ago.
Both Deshmukh, who presented budgets between 1951 and 1956, and Nirmala had presented six full budgets and an interim budget each. Two of Deshmukh’s budgets were before the constitution of the first Lok Sabha in 1952.
If one takes consecutive full budgets, Nirmala will surpass the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who presented six consecutive budgets as the Finance Minister in Congress governments.
If she continues to be Finance Minister till at least 2028 March, she will create a record of presenting the Budget 11 times, a feat nobody has achieved so far.
At present, Morarji holds the record at 10, followed by P Chidambaram (9) and Pranab Mukherjee (8) along with Deshmukh and Nirmala (7 each). Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Chidambaram, Mukherjee and Arun Jaitley have presented five consecutive budgets each.
Nirmala, the second woman to present a Budget after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971 who held the Finance portfolio, also holds the record for the longest budget speech when she spoke for two hours and 40 minutes on 1 February, 2020. She had then cut short her speech with two pages still remaining.