Lesser known facts about the Union Budget

The first budget of independent India was presented by R.K. Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947.

The first budget of the Republic of India was presented by then finance minister John Mathai on February, 28, 1950.

The budget was first introduced in India on April 7, 1860, by the East India Company to the British crown. It was presented by Scottish economist James Wilson, who was then a Finance Member of the India Council.

Earlier, the budget was presented at 5pm on the last working day of February, a practice inherited from the colonial era. While the British Parliament would pass the budget at noon, India would follow suit in the evening. Yashwant Sinha put an end to this practice in 2001 and the Union Budget has since been presented at 11am. This year, breaking yet another colonial tradition, the budget is being presented on February 1.

When Pranab Mukherjee delivered his first budget speech in 1982, lasting one hour and 35 minutes, Indira Gandhi quipped that “the shortest finance minister has delivered the longest budget speech”. In 2003, Jaswant Singh's maiden budget speech stretched beyond 2 hours. The longest budget speech was delivered by Arun Jaitley in 2014. It was two and a half hours long and included a five-minute break.

Indira Gandhi is the only woman finance minister of India so far.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi are the only prime minsters to have presented a budget while in office.

The maximum number of budgets—10—have been presented by Morarji Desai. With 9 budgets, P. Chidambaram comes second.

Morarji Desai was the only finance minister to have had the opportunity to present two budgets on his birthday—in 1964 and 1968. He was born on February 29.

Rajiv Gandhi introduced corporate tax in the 1987 budget.

Manmohan Singh introduced service tax in the 1994 budget.

The officials associated with preparation of the highly confidential budget papers are kept under isolation in the Finance Ministry building for one week before the budget. The process of printing begins with a halwa ceremony in which halwa prepared in the presence of the finance minister, is served to the entire staff in the ministry.