Union Budget 2025: Who has presented budget the most number of times?

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will create a record of presenting the highest number of consecutive Union budgets on February 1. The budget for the financial year (FY) 2025-26 will mark her eighth consecutive annual financial statement, a new record in India’s Parliamentary history.

The BJP leader assumed the role of finance minister after the NDA won the 2019 general elections. The full budget for FY 2019-20 marked Sitharaman’s first budget as a union minister. The interim budget for that year was delivered by then finance minister and BJP leader Piyush Goyal, now serving as the minister for commerce and industry.

Last FY, Sitharaman surpassed former finance minister Morarji Desai’s record of delivering six consecutive union budgets in Parliament. Desai was finance minister under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi and later became the Prime Minister of India in 1977.

Who presented the most number of budgets?

Desai has presented 10 union budgets, a feat yet to be surpassed. The late Janata Dal leader delivered his first budget in 1959 and presented five full budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1963. After four years, Desai delivered an interim budget in 1967 and three more full budgets in 1967, 1968, and 1969.

India’s prime ministers have also delivered union budgets in the past. The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, presented the FY 1958-59 budget while he temporarily handled the finance portfolio. Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tabled the FY 1969-70 budget after Desai resigned as the finance minister.

The first budget of independent India was presented by then finance minister RK Shanmugam Chetty on November 26, 1947, for ₹197.1 crore. In FY 2024-25, the total expenditure in Budget Estimates (BE) grew to ₹48,20,512 crore, of which total effective capital expenditure was estimated at ₹15,01,889 crore. This was an 18.2 per cent increase over the revised estimates for FY 2023-24.