Picture : Twitter/ ANI
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is the sixth minister in independent India to present five consecutive budget, joining a select league of legends likes of Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley and P Chidambaram.
Sitharaman’s budget for the fiscal year starting April 2023 is her fifth straight since 2019.
#WATCH | Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with her team at Parliament, to deliver her fifth #Budget today pic.twitter.com/kauGclIcgb
— ANI (@ANI) February 1, 2023
Other ministers who have presented five straight annual financial statements include Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Manmohan Singh and Morarji Desai.
After taking charge of the Finance Ministry in the Modi Government in 2014, Jaitley presented five budgets in a row from 2014-15 to 2018-19.
It was in 2017, that Jaitley departed from the colonial-era tradition of presenting Budget on the last working day of February to 1st of the month.
Moreover, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman again took a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ style pouch as she headed for Parliament to present Union Budget 2023-24 in a paperless format just like the previous two years.
She posed for the traditional ‘briefcase’ picture outside her office along with her team of officials before heading to meet the President.
She, however, was holding a tablet instead of a briefcase to present the Budget in a digital format.
