Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to present the Union Budget 2023-24 on February 1. This is the last full Budget of the current tenure of the government.
R K Shanmukham Chetty presented Independent India's first Union Budget on November 26, 1947.
India's first-ever Budget was announced on April 7, 1860 in pre-Independent India.
Morarji Desai has presented the highest number of Budgets.
The Railway Budget was merged with the Union Budget In 2017.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi are the only prime ministers to have presented a Budget.
Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha changed the time of presenting the budget to 11 am. Until 1999, the Union Budget was announced at 5 pm on the last working day of February.
The date of the Union Budget presentation was changed in 2017 by then finance minister Arun Jaitley from 'last working day of February' to 'February 1'.
The lock-in that follows the 'Halwa Ceremony' is observed to maintain secrecy around the Budget.
The longest Budget Speech in terms of word count was delivered in 1991 by then finance minister Manmohan Singh.
The longest Budget Speech in terms of duration was delivered in 2020 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. She spoke for 2.42 hours.
For printing the budget, a government press was set up in North Block's basement in 1980. Before this, it used to be printed at a press at the Minto Road in New Delhi, after it was shifted from Rashtrapati Bhavan following a budget leak in 1950.
On February 1, 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the first paperless Budget.