Modi government is going to present the interim budget for its second term on 1 February. It is expected that in this budget, some announcements can be made from tax exemption to infrastructure and defence. Earlier this budget was presented on 28th February, but now it has been changed to 1st February. Modi Government had broken this years old tradition.
In the year 2017, former Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced that the Union Budget will no longer be presented on the last working day of February. Budget is a government document under which the government presents estimated expenditure and revenue during the upcoming financial year. After this it gets approval from the Parliament. This tradition was started by the officials of the East India Company in the 1860s.
Why is the budget presented on 1 February?
Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the budget will be presented on February 1 instead of the last day of the month to end the 92-year-old practice followed during the colonial era under British rule. He said that the budget was presented at the end of February. In such a situation, the government had very little time to prepare new policies to be effective from April 1, due to which it was changed to February 1.
The practice of separate budget for railways also ends
With this change, the then Finance Minister also ended the tradition of presenting a separate budget for Railways. Railway budget was merged with the Union Budget. Let us tell you that this time Nirmala Sitharaman will present her sixth consecutive budget.
The budget was presented at 5 pm
Till 1999, the Union Budget was presented at 5 pm on the last day of February. This time was decided from British time. The budget was presented in Britain at 11 am, whereas in India it was at 5 pm. In 1999, the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee removed it to 11 am. The logic was that there is enough time for in-depth discussion on the budget.
