Budget 2012 will be 81st in India's history

New Delhi: The government will present its 81st budget proposals in the history of independent India, when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee tomorrow reads out his economic policies before the Parliament.

Individually, Mukherjee will present the Union Budget for the seventh time, the second-highest by any Finance Minister.

The Parliament has so far hosted 80 budget speeches, including interim and special-situation budgetary proposals, ever since the first union budget of independent India was

presented by then Finance Minister R K Shanmukham Chetty on 26 November, 1947.

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The maximum number of 10 budgets have been presented by Morarji Desai, while Mukherjee will tomorrow join the league of P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Y B Chavan and C D Deshmukh, who 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.

Mukherjee has so far presented six annual budgets, including the budgets for two consecutive financial years, 2010-11 and 2011-12, and an interim budget before that for the

fiscal 2009-10. Way back in early 80s also, Mukherjee had presented three consecutive budgets.

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 64 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 30 November, 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 the 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.

PTI