Ahead of the Budget on Tuesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was seen with a red sleeve tablet. She is set to present the Budget for the fiscal year 2024-25, which will also be her seventh straight Budget presentation.

The budget will be presented the Union Budget 2024 in the Lok Sabha today, July 23, at 11 am. People have high expectations from this budget session. Since India’s independence, many significant budgets have been delivered. Today, let’s read about some historic budgets that remain memorable in India's history.

First Union Budget

The first Union Budget of independent India was delivered in 1947 by the first Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty. Since then, the country has experienced numerous landmark budgets that have significantly influenced its economy. 

Union Budget 1991

Union Budget 1991, presented by former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, aimed to address the country’s economic crisis. As an economist, he implemented several reforms to the import-export policy, including reducing customs duty from 220 percent to 150 percent. These changes improved India's global competitiveness and introduced liberal policies to decrease government control.

Dream Budget of 1997

The 1997 budget, presented by former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, was known as the Dream Budget. It made reductions in both personal income tax and corporate tax rates. Personal income tax was lowered from 40 percent to 30 percent.

2017-18

In 2017-18, former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made a historic change by merging the Union Budget and the Railway Budget into a single presentation. This established the unified budget as the new standard practice.

Image credits: X (Twitter)