Union Budget 2024 | Why Railway Budget was merged

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on July 23, having already presented an Interim Budget ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. In light of the upcoming Budget, we take a look at some trivia.

Did you know, that until 2017 the Railway Budget was presented separately from the Union Budget?

In 2017, the Railway Budget was merged with the Union Budget, which concluded a practice that had begun in 1924 under the British.

The decision came after a Niti Aayog commission submitted a white paper recommending that the practice be done away with. This recommendation was submitted to then-Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.

Prabhu, in turn, wrote a letter to the then-Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to merge the Railway and Union Budgets for the welfare of the Railways and the Indian economy.

Arun Jaitely then brought this up in 2016 at the Rajya Sabha and a special committee was formed to plan the merger of the two Budgets.

Going by the Niti Aayog recommendations, the Railway Budget had shrunk significantly over the years, therefore doing away with the necessity of a separate Budget.

The recommendations also took note of the fact that the British had started this practice in 1924 since a significant portion of the government revenues and the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) depended on Railway revenues.

India was the only country with a separate Railway Budget. Arun Jaitley, in 2017, presented the first combined Union Budget, and this has been the practice since.

Union Budget 2024 | Making a record for any Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting her 7th Union Budget on July 23, 2024 under the Modi 3.0 government. While inflation has burnt a hole in the pockets of 'aam janata', will this Budget spell relief for Indians? Track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analysis only on Deccan Herald. Also follow us on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.