Union Budget: History and facts | All you need to know

Union Budget 2022

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman become the first woman Finance Minister to present the Budget for the fourth time in a row, when she presented the Union Budget 2022 on 1 February 2022.  

India’s First Budget

The first Indian Budget was presented 160 years ago, the Budget was first introduced in India on 07 April 7 1860, when Scottish economist and politician James Wilson from the East India Company presented it to the British Crown.

Independent India’s First Budget

Independent India’s first budget was presented on November 26, 1947 by the then Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.

Longest Budget Speech

Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for delivering the longest speech when she spoke for 2 hours and 42 minutes while presenting the Union Budget 2020-21 on February 1, 2020. With two pages still remaining, she had to cut short her speech as she felt unwell. She asked the Speaker to consider the remaining part of the speech as read.

Most words in Budget speech

At 18,650 words, Manmohan Singh delivered the longest Budget speech in terms of words in 1991 under the Narasimha Rao government.

In 2018, then finance minister Arun Jaitley’s speech with 18,604 words was the second longest in terms of word count. Jaitley spoke for 1 hour and 49 minutes.

Shortest Budget Speech

800 words was all that the then finance minister Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel delivered in 1977.

Most number of Budgets

Former Prime Minister Moraraji Desai holds the record of presenting the most number of budgets in the history of the country. He had presented 10 budgets during his stint as finance minister during 1962-69, followed by

• P Chidambaram (9)
• Pranab Mukherjee (8)
• Yashwant Sinha (8)
• Manmohan Singh (6)

Language in Budget

Until 1955, the Union Budget was presented in English. However, the Congress-led government later decided to print the Budget papers in both Hindi and English.

Paperless Budget

Covid-19 pandemic turned the Budget for 2021-22 paperless – a first in Independent India.

First women to present budget

In 2019, Sitharaman became the second woman to have presented the budget after Indira Gandhi, who had presented the budget for the financial year 1970-71.

That year, Sitharaman did away with the traditional budget briefcase and instead went for a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ with the National Emblem to carry the speech and other documents.

Railway budget

Till 2017, the railway budget and Union Budget were presented separately. After being presented separately for 92 years, the railway budget was merged into the Union Budget in 2017 and presented together.

Printing of budget

Till 1950, the budget was printed at Rashtrapati Bhavan till it got leaked and the venue of printing had to be shifted to a press at Minto Road in New Delhi. In 1980, a government press was set up in the North Block – the seat of the finance ministry.

Iconic budgets

The Black Budget

The 1973-74 Budget presented by Yashwantrao B Chavan in the Indira Gandhi government was called the Black Budget as the fiscal deficit during that year was Rs 550 crore. It was a time when India was going through acute financial distress.

Carrot & Stick Budget

The Union budget presented by VP Singh to the Congress government on February 28, 1986, was the first step towards dismantling licence raj in India. It was called the ‘Carrot and Stick’ budget as it offered both rewards and punishment. It introduced MODVAT (Modified Value Added Tax) credit for lowering the cascading effect of tax that consumers had to pay while also launching an intense drive against smugglers, black marketers, and tax evaders.

Epochal budget

Manmohan Singh’s landmark 1991 budget under the PV Narasimha Rao government that ended licence raj and began the era of economic liberalisation, is known as ‘Epochal Budget’. Presented at a time when India was on the brink of an economic collapse, it, among other things, slashed customs duty from 220 per cent to 150 per cent and took steps to promote exports.

Dream Budget

P Chidambaram in the 1997-98 budget used the Laffer Curve principle to lower tax rates to increase collections. He slashed the maximum marginal income tax rate for individuals from 40 per cent to 30 per cent and that for domestic companies to 35 per cent, besides unleashing a number of major tax reforms, including a voluntary disclosure of income scheme to recover black money. Referred to as the ‘Dream Budget’, it also slashed customs duty to 40 per cent and simplified excise duty structure.

Millennium Budget

Yashwant Sinha’s Millennium Budget in 2000 laid the road map for the growth of India’s Information Technology (IT) industry as it phased out incentives on software exporters and lowered customs duty on 21 items such as computers and computer accessories.

Rollback Budget

Yashwant Sinha’s 2002-03 budget for the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee is popularly remembered as the Rollback Budget, as several proposals in it were withdrawn or rolled back.

Once-in-a-Century Budget

Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2021 presented what she called the ‘once-in-a-century budget’ as it looked to revive Asia’s third-largest economy via investing in infrastructure and healthcare while relying on an aggressive privatisation strategy and robust tax collections.

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