Budget presentation: Who holds the record?

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday presented his fifth budget in Parliament on Friday but Morarji Desai holds the record of doing so 10 times.

Mukherjee, who is holding the portfolio for the second time after his first stint in 1982-1984, is the first and only Finance Minister from West Bengal.

He is behind Yashwant Sinha, who presented seven budgets, and C D Deshmukh and P Chidambaram, who did it six times each. Bihar's Sinha, who was finance minister during a brief period of 13 days in 1991, retained the portfolio during 1998-99 and 1999-2002 and presented five final and two interim budgets.

However, Chidambaram from Tamil Nadu, which also produced seven finance ministers, and Maharashtra's Deshmukh had the opportunity of presenting Union budget six times during their tenures (1996-98, 2004-08) and (1950-56), respectively.

Before becoming prime minister, Manmohan Singh (Punjab) had also presented five budgets (four final and one interim) during 1991-96.

He was followed by C Subramaniam who got the opportunity four times from 1975-1977. However, Y B Chavan, who held the portfolio during 1971-75 presented three budgets, while India's first FM R K Shanmukham Chetty (1947-1948), John Mathai (1949-50, 1950-51), Ramaswamy Venkataraman (1980-1982), VP Singh (1985-1987) and Jaswant Singh (2003-2004) got the opportunity two times each.

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