10 things we bet you didn’t know about the Budget

As Budget day approaches, here are 10 lesser known facts about India’s tradition of presenting the annual financial plan for the country.

As Budget day approaches, here are 10 lesser known facts about India’s tradition of presenting the annual financial plan for the country:

Arun Jaitley with the briefcase containing Budget 2016. (HT Archive)

1) First finance minister to present a budget in independent India:

RK Shanmugham Chetty. He presented the first Budget on November 26, 1947.

2) The first Rajya Sabha member to present a budget:

Pranab Mukherjee in 1982-83.

3) Finance minister who has presented the maximum number of budgets:

Morarji Desai. He presented eight full and two interim budgets.

4) The year in which finance ministers of two parties presented the budget in the same year:

Yashwant Sinha and Manmohan Singh in 1991. The former presented the interim budget in March and the latter presented the full budget in July.

5) Finance minister who first introduced a scheme for voluntary disclosure of unaccounted or black money:

TT Krishnamachari, in 1965.

6) Finance minister who presented budgets on his birthday:

Morarji Desai — on February 29, 1964 and 1968.

7) The only woman finance minister of India:

Indira Gandhi

8) Finance minister who introduced service tax:

Manmohan Singh in 1994-95.

9) Years in which Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, all Prime Ministers, presented the budgets:

1958-59, 1968-70 and 1986-87 respectively.

10) Finance ministers who have presented six or more budgets

Morarji Desai (10), P Chidambaram (9), Pranab Mukherjee (7) and CD Deshmukh (6)