The Union budget for the financial year 2016-2017 is all set to be presented on February 1 by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. This year's Budget has greater significance as five states are going to polls plus the Railway Budget will also be presented with the union budget for the first time. So let us go back into time and look at the list of Finance Ministers who have presented the Union Budget most number of times.
Morarji Desai
Morarji Desai has the unique distinction of being the only finance minister to present the budget 10 times, a record so far. Moraji Desai is the only finance minister to present two budgets on his birthday (Feb 29) in the years 1964 and 1968.
P.Chidambaram
In 1996, P Chidambaram presented the budget without a debate, following constitutional crises during I.K Gujral's prime-ministership. In 1997, he again proposed the 'Dream Budget'.
Pranab Mukherjee
Pranab Mukherjee was the first Rajya Sabha member to hold the Finance portfolio. Mukherjee presented the annual budgets for the financial years 1982-83, 1983–84 and 1984-85.
Yashwant Sinha
Yashwant Sinha began the new timing of budget speech by presenting the budget from 2001 at 11:00 amUntil year 2000, the Union Budget was announced at 5 pm on the last working day of February
Yashwantrao Chavan
Yashwantrao B. Chavan, Minister of Finance in the Indira Gandhi led Congress Government presented the 'Black Budget'. It helped in the nationalisation of the general insurance companies, Indian Copper Corp and coal mines with only a corpus of Rs 56 crore.
C D Deshmukh
C.D. Deshmukh has the distinction of presenting the first budget in the first elected Parliament on the basis of adult franchise. C.D. Deshmukh, incidentally the first Indian Governor of the Reserve Bank of India as well, presented an interim budget for 1951-52.
Manmohan Singh
In 1991, Manmohan Singh introduced the concept of service tax, foreign investment proposals and reduction of peak import duty from 300 percent to 50 percent which paved the way for opening up the economy (economic liberalisation) in India.
