Presenting her maiden Budget, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday broke away from tradition when she replaced the conventional leather briefcase with a bright red cloth bag to carry the Budget papers to the Parliament House.
There were other significant departures as well. The Finance Minister skipped reading the allocations to different Ministries, or the macro economic numbers like projected revenues or expenditure.
Marathon speech
At the end of her speech that extended beyond two hours and 15 minutes, Ms. Sitharaman did inform the Lok Sabha that all the numbers had been mentioned in the annexure of the Budget document.
Speaker Om Birla praised Ms. Sitharaman for presenting the Budget as the country's first full-time woman Finance Minister.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first MPs to walk up to the Finance Minister to congratulate her after she finished. Several other Ministers, including Rajnath Singh, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani, were seen congratulating her and sharing some light moments after her marathon speech.
Interestingly, while reading out the Budget, the Finance Minister didn’t pause even to have a glass of water.
Family in attendance
And while she was reading out her speech — replete with Tamil, Urdu, Hindi and Sanskrit verses — her daughter and her maternal uncle and aunt watched the proceedings from the Speaker’s Gallery on the upper deck.
When Ms. Sitharaman walked into the Lok Sabha five minutes before the proceedings started at 11 a.m., she acknowledged their presence with a smiling nod.
Indira Gandhi was the first woman to present a Budget in 1970, when she was the Prime Minister.
Her Finance Minister Morarji Desai had resigned from the Cabinet, prompting her to retain the Finance portfolio for a year.
Ms. Sitharaman’s proposals were welcomed with frequent thumping of desks by the treasury benches, Mr. Modi too joining the members. Several MPs, including Home Minister Amit Shah, were seen taking notes at regular intervals.
Loudest cheer came when the Finance Minister made announcements on rural artisans using a creative Hindi expression and the loud protest from Opposition benches happened while she was announcing the cess on petrol and diesel.
While the treasury benches were packed, there were some notable absentees including Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav. Interestingly, actor Sunny Deol, who has been mostly absent after he was sworn in, was present and so was cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir.
Silence on grants raises eyebrows
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi arrived in the House a few minutes after Ms Sitharaman started speaking and sat next to his mother and Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi in the front row.
Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram, however, expressed surprise at some of the departures. “Has there ever been a Budget speech that does not disclose the allocations to important programmes like MGNREGA, Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Healthcare, etc. and to vulnerable sections like SC, ST, Minorities and Women? We are shocked by this departure from the usual practice,” he said.
When asked about the cloth bag replacing the briefcase, Mr. Chidambaram quipped: “I can assure you in the future a Congress Finance Minister will use an iPad.”
