Nirmala to make history with 8th consecutive budget

New Delhi, PTI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1 will present a record eighth consecutive budget that is expected to contain measures to shore up weakening economic growth and ease the burden on the middle class struggling with high prices and stagnant wage growth while being fiscally prudent. This will take Sitharaman closer to the record of 10 budgets that were presented by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai over different time periods. Desai has presented a total of 6 budgets during his tenure as finance minister in 1959-1964, and 4 budgets between 1967-1969.

Former finance ministers P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee had presented nine and eight budgets, respectively, under different Prime Ministers. Sitharaman, however, will continue to hold the record of presenting the most budget in on trot - eight straight budgets under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She was in 2019 appointed as India's first full-time woman finance minister when Prime Minister Modi won a decisive second term. After Modi came back to power in 2024 for the third time, Sitharaman continued to retain her finance portfolio. So far, she has presented a total of seven straight budgets, including an interim one in February, 2024. Here are some facts related to the Budget presentation in Independent India. FIRST BUDGET: The first-ever Union Budget of independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by the nation's first finance minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.

MOST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai holds the record for presenting the most budgets. He has presented a total of 10 budgets during his tenure as finance minister under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and later under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. SECOND HIGHEST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Former finance minister P Chidambaram presented the budget on nine occasions. He first presented the budget on March 19, 1996, during the United Front government led by Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda. He presented another budget under the same government the next year and returned to the hot seat when the UPA came to power in 2009.