The Budget Session of 2024, scheduled from July 22 to August 12, was announced by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Saturday. The Union Budget is slated for presentation in the Lok Sabha on July 23.
Rijiju stated, “Hon’ble President of India, on the recommendation of Government of India, has approved the proposal for summoning of both the Houses of Parliament for the Budget Session, 2024 from 22nd July, 2024 to 12 August, 2024 (Subject to exigencies of Parliamentary Business).”
Expectations are high for the Union Budget 2024 following President Droupadi Murmu’s pledge of significant measures during her parliamentary address.
“In the upcoming sessions, this government is going to present the first budget of this term. This budget will be an effective document of the government’s far-reaching policies and futuristic vision. Along with big economic and social decisions, many historic steps will also be seen in this budget,” President Murmu emphasized.
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Nirmala Sitharaman, serving as Union Finance Minister, has presented a total of six budgets, including the Interim Budget on February 1. She is the second finance minister after former PM Morarji Desai to achieve this milestone. Sitharaman, India’s first full-time woman finance minister, has delivered five complete budgets since July 2019, surpassing the records of predecessors like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha, each of whom presented five consecutive budgets.
Under Sitharaman’s tenure, significant changes to the budget process have been introduced. In 2019, she replaced the traditional budget briefcase with a ‘bahi-khata’ adorned with the National Emblem to carry the speech and documents. Recently, she has utilized a tablet wrapped in the bahi-khata for the budget presentation.
