Budget 2020: Meet two women who presented Budget in India

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. (File Photo)

As the Finance Minister gears up to present the Union Budget 2020 on February 1, let us take a look at the women who have presented the Budget in the past years.

Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was the first woman to have presented the Union Budget. In 1970, she presented the Union Budget of India for 1970-71 after she took over the Finance portfolio following the resignation of Morarji Desai as Finance Minister.

Gandhi held the portfolio for a year before appointing her Home Minister, Yashwantrao Chavan, as the Finance Minister. Morarji Desai holds the distinction of presenting the most number of Budgets -- 10.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in 2019, became the second woman in the history of independent India to present the Union Budget.

Breaking away from the brown Budget briefcase, Sitharaman, 60, held a red parcel, like a bag, with a keyhole on the emblem. She presented the Modi 2.0 government's maiden Budget in the Lok Sabha.

Sitharaman is the first full-time woman Finance Minister to present the Budget in India. Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister who also held the Finance portfolio.

Prior to her, six Finance Ministers: Manmohan Singh (1991-1996), Yashwant Sinha (1998-2003), Jaswant Singh (2003-2004), P Chidambaram (1996-1998, 2004-2009, 2013-2014), Pranab Mukherjee (2009-2013), and Arun Jaitley (2014-2019) had presented 28 Budgets.

In the post-liberalisation era, Chidambaram presented the most number of Budgets at eight. Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, and Arun Jaitley presented five Budgets each while Pranab Mukherjee presented four. Jaswant Singh presented only one Budget.

Jaitley presented all the five Budgets of the Modi government's first tenure. He missed out presenting the interim Budget in February 2019 due to ill-health. Stand-in Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented the pre-general election Interim Budget on February 1, 2019.