The provision of the Union Budget has been made under Article 112 of the Constitution of India . Central budget is for the upcoming fiscal year (1 April -31 March )which determine the financial activities and budget allocation for the financial year to come.Here are some Facts about Indian Budget.
You will be surprised to know that In India mostly the budget are deficit budgets. Commonly country’s central budget are announced in February. In India Finance Minister Morarji Desai holds the record of presenting budgets at record 10 times.
Some of the Facts about Indian Budget :
Budget is not presented in Hindi and a lot of people thinks that it should be presented in Hindi as they think that Hindi is the National Language but this fact is not right.Hindi is one of the 22 language that are recognized in the constitution of India.
This is the diversity of India that Finance Minister is free to present Budget in any of these language but due to popularity and understanding of english throughout India,English is used to present budget.We can have Finance Minister from any of the states and he can present in any language he/she wants.Budget is printed in two languages i.e Hindi and English. Translation is also provided so that everyone can understand it.
Independent India’s first Budget was presented on 26 November 1947 by RK shanmukham Shetty while first Rail Budget was presented on 20 November 1947.
The budget presented in the red color bag whose tradition started in 1860 when William Ewart Gladstone who was the chancellor of British Treasury. As there are lots of documentation there a bag was required Therefore the trends of bag started . At that time the speeches were 5-6 hours long giving complete details of what will be provided and how much assistance will be give to different department.The British Queen Likes Red Colour therefore the budget is presented in the red bag and called Budget Box. Later this thing was used by all the Finance Ministers.
In India only deficit budget is presented because India is welfare state and a lot of money is used to propagate money into welfare schemes.As we don’t have enough amount of money therefore the deficit budget is introduced every year.
The Budget is called the central budget as India is Union of States and there are two main components in it i.e. federal state and Centre.Constitutions binds states and center and gives power to center and states.Constitution has called India union of states with center in heart of it and therefore the budget is called the central budget.
The Budget is present in printed form and its digital copies are not provided to stop any losses that might produce due to hacking or any cyber attack.So to make it fool proof it comes in printed form to maintain its secrecy.No one from the printing press are allowed to go out of printing press until the budget is presented in the parliament.The Budget is presented in Black Ink on White paper.
There is difference between balanced budget and deficit budget.The balanced budget is the budget when income and expenses of the government are equivalent. When the income is less and expenditure is high then the budget is called Deficit budget.
Finance Minister Niramala Sitharaman presented 2019 budget and draped it in a red cloth and called it Bahi Khata(ledger).It is done to come out of the british mentality.