- Budget was introduced for the first time in India on April 7, 1860,by the East India Company to the British Crown.
- The first budget for the union of India was presented on November 26, 1947, by the first finance minister RK Shanukham Chetty.
- But actually, it was a review of the economy and no new taxes were proposed.
- Nearly half of this (46 per cent) or Rs 92.74 crore was allocated for defence services
- Till 1955, the Budget was presented only in English. However from 1955-56, the Budget documents are printed both in English and Hindi.
- Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister to present the Union Budget in 1958-59.
- Other than him, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were the only PMs to have presented the Union Budget in their respective terms.
- Morarji Desai, the former Finance Minister of India, has presented the budget a record 10 times.
- Indira Gandhi was the first woman to present the Budget for 1970-71.
- Budget presented in the year 1973-74 was known as the ‘Black Budget’ due to high budget deficit of Rs 550 crore at that time.
- Budget presented by Manmohan Singh in 1991 known as ‘The Epochal Budget’.
- P CHIDAMBARAM’S 1997-98 BUDGET WAS TERMED AS DREAM BUDGET FOR LOWERING TAX RATES.
- The budget presented in the year 2000 by Yashwant Sinha is termed as ‘The Millenium Budget’.
- It is said to have revolutionised India’s Information Technology (IT) sector.
- In 2001, NDA Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed the time of budget presentation from 5 pm to 11 am.
- From 2017, the budget has been presented on February 1 following the changes introduced by the then finance minister Arun Jaitley.
- Also the rail budget was merged with the Union Budget.
- Nehru introduced the ‘gift’ tax in 1958-59 Budget to make tax evasion more difficult
- The word infrastructure wasn’t talked about for the first 30 years. It became a topic of discussion only in the 1990s.
- Goods and Services Tax made its debut in the Budget speech of P Chidambaram on February 28, 2006.
Q) In India, deficit financing is used for raising resources for?
- Economic development
- Redemption of public debt
- Adjusting the balance of payments
- Reducing the foreign debt
Budget 2021 – 2022 | Free PDF