New Delhi: In the backdrop of the third wave of Covid-19, Parliament will meet from January 31 to April 8 for the budget session – the longest annual session. And the much-awaited General Budget will be presented on February 1, which is expected to see important economic announcements keeping in mind the times affected by the pandemic.
Presentation of annual budget in India is a century old practice which has been going on since pre-independence times. Budget proposals were first presented in 1860 by James Wilson, the ‘Finance Member’ of the Council of India.
In independent India, the Union Budget was presented on the last working day of February, continuing with the practice of the colonial era. In 2017, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that the Union Budget would henceforth be presented on February 1. Also, till 1999, the budget was announced at 5 pm instead of the current 11 am slot.
Here is a brief look at the history of budget presentation in India.
budget basic
The word budget is derived from the French word bogat, which means leather briefcase. This is the reason why over the years finance ministers can be seen organizing it in Parliament on budget day. The tradition comes from the United Kingdom. The first budget box was designed in 1860 for the then Chancellor William Ewart Gladstone. It was a wooden box with the queen’s monogram embossed in gold. Since then, Britain has stuck with red Gladstone bags. Although India has also followed this tradition, no specific color has been used for the briefcase.
first union budget
The first Union Budget of independent India was presented by RK Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947. Chetty, the country’s first finance minister, was not a member of the Congress, but an industrialist and the then Diwan of Cochin State. He had taken the trademark budget bag with him to Parliament.
First United-India Budget
In 1949–50, John Mathai succeeded Shanmukham Chetty as finance minister and presented the first joint-India budget. Mathai’s budget speech was a candid speech, for which he received much praise. They decided not to read the details, instead circulated papers with budget details, which made it much easier for the members to understand.
Budget presented since 1947
Since independence, a total of 73 annual budgets have been presented to Parliament along with 14 interim budgets and four special budgets. Former Finance Minister Morarji Desai presented maximum 10 budgets by any Finance Minister of the country. All these budgets were presented between 1959 and 1969.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram has also presented nine Union Budgets, followed by Pranab Mukherjee’s eight. Yashwant Sinha, Yashwantrao Chavan and CD Deshmukh presented seven budgets each, while Manmohan Singh and TT Krishnamachari presented six each.
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