After playing a crucial role in breaking the logjam in Parliament, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is all set to steer clear the cloud over the prospects of a sustained 9 per cent or more economic growth in coming years in his sixth budget to be presented on Monday. Morarji Desai with eight full budgets holds the record for presenting maximum number of budgets, though in two different stints. P Chidambaram comes next with presentation of seven full budgets, also in two different stints and in two different governments.
Mukherjee would join C D Deshmukh in doing so by presenting his sixth budget. He is holding the finance minister’s portfolio for the second time after his first stint in 1982-1984.
Chidambaram and Deshmukh had the opportunity of presenting full Union budgets seven and six times during their tenures (1996-98, 2004-08) and (1950-56), respectively.
Yashwant Sinha was finance minister for a few months in 1991, but could not present a full budget. He got the portfolio again during 1998-99 and 1999-2002 and presented five full budgets.
Dr. Manmohan Singh had also presented five budgets during 1991-96. Y B Chavan, who held the portfolio during 1971-75, presented four budgets and T T Krishnamachari presented three. India’s first finance minister R K Shanmukham Chetty (1947-1948), John Mathai (1949-50, 1950-51), Ramaswamy Venkataraman (1980-1982) and VP Singh (1985-1987) got the opportunity twice each. Jaswant Singh presented just one budget.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi presented one budget each in 1958, 1970 and 1987, respectively.