Nirmala Sitharaman set to make history with 7th consecutive Budget next month

She will become the first finance minister in India to present seven consecutive Union Budgets, breaking the record held by Morarji Desai, who presented six consecutive budgets.

Desai, who served as the finance minister from 1959 to 1964, had presented a total of ten budgets, holding the record for the highest number of budgets presented by any Indian finance minister for over five decades.

He also served as India's fourth Prime Minister from March 24, 1977, to July 28, 1979.

Sitharaman was appointed as the finance minister in the Modi 2.0 government after the 2019 general elections. She is the second woman to present the budget after Indira Gandhi (1970-71) and the first full-time female finance minister of India.

In 2019, she replaced the traditional budget briefcase with a "bahi-khata," a traditional ledger book adorned with the National Emblem.

To date, Sitharaman has presented five complete budgets and one interim budget earlier this year, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, crossing the five-budget streaks of her predecessors, including Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P. Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha.

With the interim budget presented on February 1 of this year, she equaled Morarji Desai's record of six consecutive budgets.

Now in her second term as finance minister, Sitharaman is expected to present the full Union Budget 2024-25 in Parliament in the second week of July.

This will be the first full budget of the newly-formed government under Narendra Modi's third consecutive term as Prime Minister of India.