Interesting Facts About Indian Budget

Budget was introduced for the first time in india on April 7, 1860, by the east India Company to the british crown.

The first budget for the union of india was presented on november 26, 1947, by the first finance minister R K Shanmukham Chetty. But actually, it was review of the economy and no new taxes were proposed. Nearly half of this (46%) or Rs 92.74 crore was allocated for defense services department.

Till 1955, the budget was presented only in English. However from 1955-56, the budget documents are printed both in English and hindi.

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister to present the union Budget in 1958-59. Other than him, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv gandhi were the only PMs to have presented the union Budget in their respective terms. 

Morarji Desai, the former Finance minister of india , has presented the budget a record 10 times.

Indira Gandhi was the first woman to present the budget for 1970-71.

Budget presented in the year 1973-74 was known as the Black budget due to high budget deficit of Rs 50 crore at that time.

Budget presented by Manmohan Singh in 1991 known as The Epochal Budget.

P Chidambaram's 1997-98 budget was termed as dream budget for lowering tax rates.

The budget presented in the year 2000 by Yashwant Sinha is termed as The Millenium Budget. It is said to have revolutionised India's IT sector. In 2001, NDA Finance Minister Yashwant sinha changed the time of budget presentation from 5pm to 11am.

From 2017, the budget has been presented on February 1 following the changes introduced by the then finance minister Arun Jaitely. Also the rail budget was merged with Union Budget.