Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday presented his eighth annual budget in Parliament, the second highest by anyone in the country after a record ten by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
Overall, it was 82nd Union Budget in the Indian history, including interim and special-situation budgetary proposals, since the first one of independent India was presented by then Finance Minister R K Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947.
Individually, Mr. Chidambaram presented the Union Budget for the eighth time, the second-highest by any Finance Minister.
The maximum number of 10 budgets have been presented by Morarji Desai, while Pranab Mukherjee (currently President of the country), Yashwant Sinha, Y B Chavan and C D Deshmukh have presented seven budgets each in the past.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the country’s fourth Finance Minister T T Krishnamachari have presented six budgets each during their tenures in the Finance Ministry.
Among others, R Venkatraman and H M Patel have presented three budgets each, while Jaswant Singh, V P Singh, C Subramaniam, John Mathai and R K Shanmukham Chetty have two budgets each to their credits.
Besides, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Charan Singh, N D Tiwari, Madhu Dandwate, S B Chavan and Sachindra Chaurdhuri have presented one budget each.
Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi had presented budget in their capacity as Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
Charan Singh (once) and Morarji Desai (on four occasions) presented budget as Deputy PM and Minister of Finance.
So far, the country has seen 66 normal annual budgets; while there have been 12 interim budgets and four special- occasion budgetary proposals, also known as mini budgets.
The first such mini-budget was presented by T T Krishnamachari on November 30, 1956 in form of fresh taxation proposals through Finance Bills, demanded by the prevailing domestic and international economic situation.
The step was also required to tackle issues like rising inflation and dwindling forex reserves at that time.
The second mid-year budget taxation proposals were also presented by Krishnamachari in August 1965, while the third mini-budget was presented by Y B Chavan in December 1971 wherein he proposed additional measures for mobilisation of resources for defence requirements.
The last mini-budget proposals in Parliament was also made by Chavan in July 1974, wherein he made fresh taxation proposals to tackle inflation-related issues after only five months of the regular annual budget.
