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India Budget 2025 Insights: James Wilson, a Scottish economist, delivered India’s first budget on April 7, 1860.
Union Budget 2025: Historical Facts About Union Budgets.
Union Budget 2025 Facts: This year on February 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to announce the Union Budget. Hopes are high for infrastructure allocation, income tax slabs, GST rationalisation, and regulatory revisions to address consumer sentiment and economic pain, from regular taxpayers to those in the tech, healthcare, insurance, and financial industries.
The first part of Parliament’s budget session will start on January 31 and last through February 13, 2025. Additionally, the session’s second half will start on March 10 and end on April 4, 2025.
Before the finance minister announces the budget, here are some interesting facts about the Union Budget:
– James Wilson, a Scottish economist, delivered India’s first budget on April 7, 1860.
– Following independence, on February 28, 1948, the country’s first annual budget was presented by then-finance minister R K Shanmukham Chetty.
– Up to 1999, the budget for India was announced on the last working day of February at 5 pm. In the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government at the time, Yashwant Sinha, the finance minister, changed this to 11 am.
– The record for the longest budget speech in terms of words is held by Dr Manmohan Singh, who used 18,604 words in 1991. In 2018, Arun Jaitley’s speech ranked second in terms of word count with 18,604 words.
– Furthermore, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for the longest budget speech. She spoke for two hours and 42 minutes during the Union Budget for 2020-21.
– Nirmala Sitharaman broke the record set by former Finance Minister Morarji Desai in 2024 by being the first Finance Minister to propose seven consecutive budgets.
– Moraraji Desai continues to be the person who submitted the most budget proposals in India’s history. From 1962 to 1969, he served as finance minister and presented eleven budgets.
– In 1977, Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel gave the shortest budget speech, which was only 800 words long.
– Up until 1955, only English was used to present the Union Budget. It was eventually agreed by the Congress government to print the budget documents in both Hindi and English.
– The first budget to be fully digitalised due to the COVID-19 epidemic was the 2021–2022 budget.
