FM Nirmala Sitharaman to set new record with 7th consecutive Union Budget

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to make history next month when she presents the Union Budget 2024-25 in Parliament. Sitharaman will become the first finance minister in India to deliver seven consecutive Union Budgets, surpassing the record held by Morarji Desai, who presented six consecutive budgets.

Before Sitharaman, Morarji Desai tabled five full budgets and one interim budget. Desai had served as the country's finance minister from 1959 to 1964. Desai has held the record for the highest number of budgets presented by any finance minister of India, with a total of ten, for more than five decades. He also served as the fourth Prime Minister of India from March 24, 1977, to July 28, 1979.

The late Arun Jaitley also got close by presenting five consecutive budgets from 2014-15 to 2018-19, before Sitharaman. Following Jaitley, Piyush Goyal had presented the interim budget for the financial year 2019-20 on February 1, 2019. Goyal has served 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, and the first full-time woman finance minister of India.

In 2019, Sitharaman also made headlines 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.

Till now, Sitharaman has presented five complete budgets and one interim budget earlier this year, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. She has already 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 equalled Morarji Desai's record of six consecutive budgets.

Having recently taken charge for her second term as finance minister, Sitharaman is expected to table 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, as finance minister for the next five years, Sitharaman is poised to further solidify her place in history by potentially setting new records for the presentation of the Union Budget in India.