History of Union Budget in India

As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gears up to present his fifth budget in a row this year today, let’s take a look at the history of Union Budget.

• Every year, the printing of budget begins with a ‘halwa-making ceremony’ where halwa is prepared in a big cooking pot and served to the entire staff in the ministry.
• Till date, Indira Gandhi has been the only woman finance minister in the history of India. She was also the first finance minister.
• On November 26, 1947, the first budget of India was presented by then Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.
• So far, the maximum number of budgets have been presented by Morarji Desai - 10, P Chidambaram stands second with eight budgets.
• Pranab Mukherjee, Yashwant Sinha, YB Chavan and CD Deshmukh presented seven budgets each while former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and TT Krishnamachari have presented six budgets.
• Apart from Arun Jaitley, Manmohan Singh and Yashwant Sinha have presented five Budgets in a row.
• R Venkatraman and HM Patel presented three budgets each whereas VP Singh, Jaswant Singh, C Subramaniam, RK Shanmukham Chetty and John Mathai presented two budgets each.
• Lastly, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, ND Tiwari, Charan Singh, Madhu Dandwate, Sachindra Chaurdhuri and SB Chavan have presented one budget each.
• All the three -  Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi presented the budget in their capacity as Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
• In 2017, the Rail Budget presented separately for 92 years, got merged with Union Budget.
• The Union Budget 2018-19 would be the last budget of the NDA government before the 2019 General Elections.