Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is gearing up to present the Union Budget on February 1, 2022 for the fourth time. Sitharaman, who first presented a Budget in July 2019, is one of only two women who have presented the Budget.
Over the years, several finance ministers and prime ministers have presented the Union Budget multiple times. However, the finance minister who has presented the highest number of budgets is Morarji Desai — with a record of 10 Union Budgets.
Born in Bulsar district of Gujarat in 1896, Desai presented the budget every year from 1959 to 1963. His second spree was from 1967 to 1969. Apart from this, he also presented the interim budget for 1962-63 and 1967-68.
This year, Sitharaman will be presenting the 32nd budget (excluding interim ones) after the landmark economic liberalisation in 1991.
Earlier, six finance ministers: Manmohan Singh (1991-1996), Yashwant Sinha (1998-2003), Jaswant Singh (2003-2004), P Chidambaram (1996-1998, 2004-2009, 2013-2014), Pranab Mukherjee (2009-2013), and Arun Jaitley (2014-2019) had presented 28 budgets.
Jaitley presented all the five budgets of the Modi government's first tenure but missed out on presenting the interim budget in February this year due to illness. Stand-in Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget on February 1, 2019, before the 2019 Lok Sabha Sabha election. The next three budgets — July 2019, February 2020 and February 2021 — were presented by Nirmala Sitharaman.
On Sunday, Sitharaman met BJP leaders from a number of states and sought their inputs for the Budget.
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Published 17 January 2022, 12:06 IST