The Modi government will present the general budget for the financial year 2023-24 on 1 February. The Government of India will test to deliver an effective budget, incorporating capex, rural, social, policy incentives, subsidies, and tax/growth buoyancy. Let us tell you, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the last budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. See here what developments have happened in the country since the first budget was presented.
The country’s first budget was presented
The budget was presented for the first time on 7 April 1860, two years after the transfer of Indian administration from the East-India Company to the British Crown. The first Finance Minister member to present the budget was James Wilson.
Liaquat Ali Khan, a member of the interim government, presented the budget for 1947–48. After independence, Shanmukham Chetty, India’s first finance minister, presented the first budget of independent India on 26 November 1947.
Printing place changed after budget leak
Till 1950, the budget was printed in Rashtrapati Bhavan. But since the budget was leaked, its printing had to be shifted to a press located on Minto Road in New Delhi. Subsequently, in 1980 a Government Press was established in North Block, the seat of the Ministry of Finance.
Hindi language was added in the budget
Till 1955, the Union Budget was presented in English. However, later the Congress-led government decided to print the budget papers in both Hindi and English.
Manual budget was introduced
In 2010, the then Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee released the first budget manual of the central government. In his words, the manual was an attempt to bring together the entire budget related activities and procedures, which till then were available disparately in the form of executive instructions and guidelines.
Merger of Rail Budget with Union Budget
In 1924, apart from the Union Budget, the British also started the tradition of having a Railway Budget. This happened because a significant portion of the government’s revenue and the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) depended on railway revenue.
However, in 2017, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley discussed merging the Railway Budget with the Union Budget in Parliament and a committee was formed to look into the merger of the budgets. Arun Jaitley presented the first joint Union Budget in 2017 and since then the practice has been going on.
Change in time and date of presentation of budget
Until 1999, the Union Budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of February according to the British. In 1999, the then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed the time of presentation of the budget from 5 pm to 11 am. Arun Jaitley, as finance minister, began presenting the Union Budget on 1 February in 2017, breaking away from the colonial-era tradition of using the last working day of that month.
paperless budget
Until Nirmala Sitharaman took office in 2019, finance ministers kept the budget in brown, red or brown briefcases and replaced them with the traditional bahi khata or cloth ledger. But then even after the Kovid epidemic, a change was made in it and it was made paperless by presenting the budget in Parliament in 2021. And Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman carried a device in a compact red case. And thus began the era of paperless budgeting.
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