Wearing a white-red Madhubani print saree and carrying her budget tablet, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan before presenting the Union Budget in Parliament today.
The President gave her ‘dahi-cheeni’ (curd and sugar) and blessed her.
Sitharaman is going to present her 8th Budget in a row today and people are waiting for a solution to their problems like price rise and tax slabs. After meeting the President, Sitharaman met the Union Cabinet and got the Union Budget approved.
This will take Sitharaman to 10 budgets presented by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai in different stints. Desai presented 6 budgets as finance minister between 1959 and 1964 and 4 more between 1967 and 1969. Former finance ministers P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee presented 9 and 8 budgets respectively under different Prime Ministers.
But Sitharaman will continue to hold the record of presenting most consecutive budgets – 8 in a row under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She became India’s first full-time female finance minister in 2019 when Modi got a second term.
