Union budget of India

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The Union Budget of India, also called the general budget, is the annual budget of the Republic of India, presented each year on the last working day of February by the Finance Minister of India in Parliament. The budget has to be passed by the House before it can come into effect on April 1, the start of India's financial year. Former Finance Minister Morarji Desai presented the budget eight times, the most by any.^[1]

1 Chronology
- 1.1 Pre-liberalisation
- 1.2 Post-liberalisation
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Chronology

[edit] Pre-liberalisation

Dr. Manmohan Singh, the current Prime Minister of India, was instrumental in liberalising the Indian economy.

The first Union budget of independent India was presented by R. K. Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947.^[1]

The Union budgets for the fiscal years 1959-60 to 1963-64, inclusive of the interim budget for 1962-63, were presented by Morarji Desai.^[1] On February 29 in 1964 and 1968, he became the only finance minister to present the Union budget on his birthday.^[2] Desai presented budgets that included five annual budgets, an interim budget during his first stint and one interim budget and three final budgets in his second tenure when he was both the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India.^[1]

After Desai's resignation, Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, took over the Ministry of Finance to become the only woman to hold the post of the finance minister.^[1]

Pranab Mukherjee, the first Rajya Sabha member to hold the Finance portfolio, presented the annual budgets for 1982-83, 1983-84 and 1984-85.^[1]

Rajiv Gandhi presented the budget for 1987-88 after V P Singh quit his government, and in the process became only the third Prime Minister to present a budget after his mother and grandfather.^[1]

N. D. Tiwary presented the budget for 1988-89, S B Chavan for 1989-90, while Madhu Dandawate presented the Union budget for 1990-91.^[1]

Yashwant Sinha became the Finance Minister but presented the interim budget for 1991-92 as elections were forced.^[1]

Due to political developments, early elections were held in May 1991 following which the Indian National Congress returned to political power and Manmohan Singh, the Finance Minister, presented the budget for 1991-92.^[1]

[edit] Post-liberalisation

Manmohan Singh, in his next annual budgets from 1992-93, opened the economy^[3], encouraged foreign investments and reduced peak import duty from 300 plus percent to 50 percent.^[1]

After elections in 1996, a non-Congress ministry assumed office. Hence the final budget for 1996-97 was presented by P. Chidambaram, who then belonged to Tamil Maanila Congress.^[1]

Following a constitutional crisis when the I. K. Gujral Ministry was on its way out, a special session of Parliament was convened just to pass Chidambaram's 1997-98 budget. This budget was passed without a debate.^[1]

After the general elections in March 1998 that led to the Bharatiya Janata Party forming the Central Government, Yashwant Sinha, the then Finance Minister in this government, presented the interim and final budgets for 1998-99.^[1]

After general elections in 1999, Sinha again became the finance minister and presented four annual budgets from 1999-2000 to 2002-2003.^[1] Due to elections in May 2004, an interim budget was presented by Jaswant Singh.^[1]