This will be her 8th consecutive budget…
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present a budget that is expected to contain measures to shore up weakening economic growth and ease the burden on the middle class struggling with high prices and wage growth on February 1.
This will take Ms. Sitharaman closer to the record of 10 budgets that were presented by former PM Morarji Desai over different time periods.
He presented 6 budgets during his tenure as finance minister in 1959-1964 and 4 budgets between 1967-1969.
Under the different PMs, Former finance ministers P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee presented nine and eight budgets.
Ms. Sitharaman, however, will continue to hold the record of presenting the most budget in one trot - eight straight budgets under PM Narendra Modi.
She was in 2019 appointed as India's first full-time woman finance minister when PM Modi won a decisive second term. After PM Modi came back to power in 2024 for the third time, Ms. Sitharaman continued to retain her finance portfolio.
So far, she has presented a total of seven straight budgets, including an interim one in February 2024.
The first-ever Union Budget of independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by the nation's first finance minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.
Edited By: Tanvi Walia
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