Interim Budget snippets

Since the beginning of the 1990s, there have been four occasions on which interim budgets have been presented — by Yashwant Sinha in 1991, Manmohan Singh in 1996, Sinha again in 1998 and Jaswant Singh in 2004. The only one of them who went on to present the full budget later in the year was Sinha in 1998. In every other case, the minister who presented the interim budget, found his party out of power after the elections and hence obviously had no chance of completing the job. Sinha in 1998 was actually not really an exception. He presented an interim budget not before the Lok Sabha elections, but immediately after them. Since the Vajpayee-led government had assumed office on March 19 that year, there was too little time for a full budget to be prepared before the financial year ended. Sinha, therefore, presented an interim budget to get spending approved till a full budget was by him in June that year. If this history makes it looks like FMs — and parties — presenting interim budgets are jinxed, there is enough evidence from an earlier era to the contrary. Prior to 1991, there have been seven occasions on which interim budgets have been presented. The first three of these were before the first three general elections in 1952, 1957 and 1962. The Congress continued in power after each of these and the respective FMs — C D Deshmukh, T T Krishnamachari and Morarji Desai — went on to finish the job they had begun. The next four — presented by Desai in 1967-68, Y B Chavan in 1971-72, H M Patel in 1977-78 and R Venkataraman in 1980-81 — all came immediately after elections and hence it is no surprise that in each case the man who presented the final budget was the one who had prepared the interim one.