When Nirmala Sitharaman rises in Parliament right now to current the Union Funds for 2025–26, she gained’t simply be outlining the federal government’s fiscal roadmap—she’ll be making historical past. This marks her eighth consecutive finances presentation, surpassing all predecessors in India’s historical past for back-to-back budgets. The second additionally stands as a testomony to her tenure as the primary full-time girl Finance Minister, a task she took on in 2019 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi secured his second time period.
With this finances—the primary beneath the Modi 3.0 authorities—Sitharaman strikes nearer to the all-time report of ten Union Budgets held by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Desai’s report was set throughout two separate tenures, with six budgets introduced between 1959 and 1964 throughout his time as Finance Minister, and 4 extra from 1967 to 1969. Sitharaman, nonetheless, is scripting her legacy by an unbroken streak since 2019, together with the interim finances of February 2024.
She now stands alongside a distinguished league of finance ministers who’ve formed India’s fiscal panorama over the a long time. P. Chidambaram delivered 9 budgets throughout his a number of phrases, whereas Pranab Mukherjee introduced eight. Manmohan Singh, throughout his transformative tenure as Finance Minister within the early Nineteen Nineties, introduced 5 budgets that performed a pivotal position in liberalizing the Indian economic system.
Past setting information for the variety of consecutive budgets, Sitharaman additionally holds one other distinctive distinction—the longest finances speech in India’s historical past. In 2020, she spoke for 2 hours and forty minutes earlier than well being considerations prompted her to chop the speech brief, leaving two pages unread. This contrasts sharply with the shortest finances speech delivered in 1977 by Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel, who wrapped up the interim finances in simply 800 phrases.
The evolution of the Union Funds presentation itself mirrors the altering dynamics of Indian governance. Till 1999, budgets had been historically introduced at 5 pm—a colonial hangover designed to coincide with enterprise hours in London.
This observe was discontinued by then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, who shifted the finances presentation to 11 am through the Atal Bihari Vajpayee authorities. One other vital reform got here in 2017 when the date of the finances presentation was superior from the final day of February to February 1. This transformation ensured that the parliamentary approval course of might be accomplished by the top of March, permitting for seamless implementation from April 1, the beginning of the brand new fiscal yr.
