What is Interim Budget?

An interim Budget becomes a necessity every year, as Parliament require approval for drawing funds from the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) for expenditure is usually obtained by March 31, the last day of the financial year.

If a regular Budget is not presented before March 31 and further approval for funds for expenditure is not set, the government can come to standstill. So an interim budget is needed to be presented to keep the government running until a regular Budget is passed by Parliament.

So far Indian Parliament witnessed 11 interim Budgets since Independence.

--Independent India's first Budget which was presented by India's first finance minister, R K Shanmukham Chetty, on Nov 26, 1947 was an interim Budget.

--C D Deshmukh, on Feb 29, 1952, presented the second interim Budget. He set a new trend by presenting a 'white paper' along with the revised estimates for 1951-52 and the Budget estimates for 1952-53. The 'white paper' was about the state pf the economy. But his interim Budget is best remembered for his claim of how he had converted a Budget deficit projected earlier into a Budget surplus by the time the year was coming to a close. Equally significant was his bold announcement that food subsidies would have to be abolished to relieve the exchequer of this growing burden.

--T T Krishnamachari (TTK) presented his interim Budget for 1957-58, just before the general elections.

--Former Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai presented two interim Budgets — one for 1962-63 and the other for 1967-68. The first one was presented when he served the post of Finance Minister under Jawahal Lal Nehru's Prime Ministership. He presented the second interim Budget as a Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in Indira Gandhi's government.

--The interim Budget presented by Y B Chavan for 1971-72 had no special features.

--H M Patel's interim Budget of 1976-77 had many firsts. This was the first interim Budget to be presented by a former bureaucrat and also a finance secretary. His speech was the shortest of all interim Budget speeches.

--R Venkataraman used his interim Budget speech for 1980-81 as a political statement to attack the Janata government's economic policies. Venkataraman presented a long speech of over 40 paragraphs.

--Yashwant Sinha's debut as finance minister was with an interim Budget, caused by the fall of the Chandra Shekhar government requiring a general election in May 1990. India witnessed the height of economic crisis at this period. His second budget was a mild one with some criticism citing the failure of his predecessor P Chidambaram's failure to meet the various revenue and expenditure targets.

--Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh presented the interim Budget before the May 1996 elections. It was a virtual election manifesto. He took credit for Rs 5,000 crore in disinvestment receipts and Rs 4,000 crore in dividend from state owned enterprises, money that his successor would have to find.

OneIndia News (With inputs from Agencies)