Budget 2024: How Colonial Baggage Was Shed During Jaitley-Sitharaman Years
Jan 31, 2024, 11:14 IST
Mukul Sharma
Arun Jaitley Changed Budget Tradition
Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in 2017 ended the 92-year-old colonial-era practice of presenting the budget on the last day of February.
New Budget Delivery Date
The budget is now presented on February 1 every year.
No Separate Budget For Railways
Remember those much-awaited railway budget speeches by Lalu Yadav and then Mamata Banerjee after him? Well, they are now the things of the past. Jaitley also abolished the colonial-era practice of presenting a separate budget for Railways by the concerned minister.
No More Briefcase
Nirmala Sitharaman replaced the traditional briefcase with a 'bahi khata' in 2019.
Budget Timings Were Changed in 1999
In 1999, Yashwant Sinha, the finance minister in the then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government, changed the time for the presentation of the Union Budget from 5 pm to 11 am.