New Delhi, July 21: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to create history when she presents her seventh consecutive budget for fiscal year 2024-25 on Tuesday, breaking the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.

Sitharaman, who turns 65 next month, was appointed India’s first full-time woman finance minister in 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a decisive second term. She has since presented six consecutive budgets, including an interim budget in February this year.

The full budget for fiscal year 2024-25 (April 2024 to March 2025) will be her seventh in a row, breaking the record of Desai, who presented five consecutive full budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964.

This year there will be two budgets: an interim budget in February and a full budget this month. This is because a sitting government cannot present a full budget just before a general election.

The July 23 presentation will be the first budget by the BJP-led NDA government since it was re-elected last month.

Here are some facts regarding the presentation of budget in Independent India:

FIRST BUDGET: The very first Union Budget of independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by the country’s first Finance Minister R K Shanmukham Chetty.

MOST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai holds the record for presenting the most budgets. He could present only five budgets in a row. However, he presented a total of 10 budgets during his tenure as Finance Minister under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and later under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

He presented his first budget on 28 February 1959 and presented full budgets in the next two years before presenting an interim budget in 1962. This was followed by two full budgets. After four years, he presented another interim budget in 1967, followed by three full budgets in 1967, 1968 and 1969, for a total of 10 budgets.

SECOND HIGHEST BUDGET NUMBER: Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram presented the budget nine times. He first presented it on March 19, 1996, during the United Front government led by Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda. He presented another budget under the same government the next year and returned to the hot seat when the Congress-led UPA came to power in 2014.

He presented five budgets between 2004 and 2008. After a period as Minister of the Interior, he returned to the Ministry of Finance and presented budgets in 2013 and 2014.

THIRD HIGHEST NUMBER OF BUDGETS: Pranab Mukherjee presented eight budgets during his tenure as Finance Minister. He presented budgets in 1982, 1983 and 1984 and five consecutive budgets between February 2009 and March 2012 in the Congress-led UPA government.

MANMOHAN SINGH: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh presented five consecutive budgets between 1991 and 1995, when he was finance minister in the PV Narasimha Rao government.

LONGEST BUDGET TALK: Sitharaman holds the record for the longest budget speech when her presentation on February 1, 2020, lasted for two hours and 40 minutes. At that time, she cut her speech short when there were two pages left.

SHORTEST BUDGET SPEECH: Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel’s speech on the interim budget in 1977 is the shortest so far at just 800 words.

TIMING: The budget was traditionally presented on the last day of February at 5pm. The timing followed a colonial custom when the announcements could be made at the same time in London and India. India is 4 hours and 30 minutes ahead of British Summer Time, and so presenting the budget at 5pm in India ensured that it happened during the day in the UK.

In 1999, the timing was changed when the then Finance Minister Yashwant Singh of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government presented the budget at 11 am.

Since then, budgets have been presented at 11:00 am.

DATE: The budget submission date was changed to February 1 in 2017 so that the government could complete the approval process in parliament before the end of March and the budget could be implemented from the start of the fiscal year on April 1.

The presentation of the budget on 29 February meant that implementation could only begin in May/June, after 2-3 months of parliamentary approval process had passed. (Agencies)