Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Set to Make History with 7th Consecutive Union Budget Presentation

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is on the verge of making history as she prepares to present the Union Budget 2024-25 in Parliament. With this, she will become the first finance minister in India to deliver seven consecutive Union Budgets, surpassing the previous record set by Morarji Desai, who presented six consecutive budgets.
Before Sitharaman, Morarji Desai served as the country’s finance minister from 1959 to 1964. He held the record for the highest number of budgets presented by any finance minister in India, with a total of ten, for more than five decades. Desai also served as the fourth Prime Minister of India from March 24, 1977, to July 28, 1979.
Arun Jaitley came close to Desai’s record by presenting five consecutive budgets from 2014-15 to 2018-19. Following Jaitley, Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget for the financial year 2019-20 on February 1, 2019. Goyal has been serving as the Union Commerce and Industry Minister since 2019.
After the 2019 general elections, Sitharaman was appointed as the finance minister in the Modi 2.0 government. She became the second woman to present the budget after Indira Gandhi, who did so for the financial year 1970-71. Sitharaman made headlines in 2019 by replacing the traditional budget briefcase with a “bahi-khata,” a traditional ledger book adorned with the National Emblem to carry her speech and documents.
As of now, Sitharaman has already presented five complete budgets and one interim budget earlier this year, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. She has surpassed the five-budget streaks of her predecessors, including Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha. With the interim budget presented on February 1 of this year, Sitharaman equaled Morarji Desai’s record of six consecutive budgets.
Having recently started her second term as finance minister, Sitharaman is expected to present the full Union Budget 2024-25 in Parliament in the second week of July. This will be the first full budget of the newly-inducted government under Narendra Modi’s third consecutive term as Prime Minister of India.
Looking ahead, Sitharaman has the potential to set new records for the presentation of the Union Budget in India as she serves as finance minister for the next five years. Her contributions will further solidify her place in history.