Sitharaman presents Budget in Parliament

Sat, 01 February 2025

11:02

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has begun her Budget speech in Parliament.

Her Budget for the fiscal year starting April 2025 (FY2025-26) marks the 14th consecutive Budget under the Narendra Modi government since 2014, including two interim Budgets presented ahead of the general elections in 2019 and 2024.

She was appointed as the finance minister when Modi swept to power again in the 2019 election and presented her maiden Budget on July 5, 2019.

She used a red cloth folder enclosed with a string and emblazoned with the national emblem to carry the Budget documents.

Earlier, finance ministers in different governments, including her predecessors in the Modi government -- Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal -- used the standard Budget briefcase.

Before Sitharaman, a long-standing colonial tradition in connection with the Budget presentation was broken during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government when the then finance minister Yashwant Sinha presented the Budget at 11 am rather than at the traditional time of 5 pm.

Since then, all the governments have been presenting the Budget at 11 am.

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