The Budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1. This will be the sixth consecutive year for the finance minister to present the budget, which will be an interim budget ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Sitharaman presented her first budget in 2019. Last year, she became the sixth finance minister to present five Union Budgets in a row. Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Manmohan Singh and Morarji Desai are the other finance ministers, who presented five or more budgets in a row.
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After taking charge of the Finance Ministry in the Modi Government in 2014, Jaitley presented five budgets in a row from 2014-15 to 2018-19. In 2017, Jaitley departed from the colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget on the last working day of February to the first day of the month.
Piyush Goyal, who held additional charge of the ministry due to Jaitley's ill health presented the interim budget for 2019-20.
Sitharaman was appointed Union Finance Minister in the Modi 2.0 Government following the 2019 general elections. She became the second woman to present the Budget after Indira Gandhi, who presented it for the financial year 1970-71. In place of the customary budget briefcase, Sitharaman chose a “bahi-khata” with the National Emblem to hold the speech and other documents. The tradition of carrying the Budget papers in a briefcase was an adaptation from the British. India’s budget briefcase was a copy of the “Gladstone box’ “that is used in the British budget.
Under Sitharaman, India combatted the COVID-19 pandemic with an array of measures announced for the poor and continued its tag as the fastest-growing major economy and a “bright spot” in the world economy.
The first budget
Union Budget 2019 was the first budget presented by Sitharaman. It highlighted the goal of the government to turn India into a $5 trillion economy. She spoke about expanding the Digital India campaign to all sectors of the economy. The Budget also highlighted the goal of improving the nation’s health with the Ayushman Bharat scheme.
She also focused on MSMEs, start-ups, defence manufacturing, automobiles, electronics, fabs and batteries, and medical devices under the Make in India campaign. Her speech went on for around 2 hours and 15 minutes.
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