Jawaharlal Nehru is not alone among the Prime Ministers who have presented the Union Budget.
The Union Budget is a detailed statement of the estimated receipts and expenditures of the central government for a particular financial year. Every year, the Union Finance Minister presents the Budget as mandated under Article 112 of the Constitution.
However, there have been a few instances in the history of Independent India, when the Union Budget was presented by the Prime Minister instead of the Finance Minister. The first such occasion was in 1958, when India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru presented the Budget after TT Krishnamachari resigned as Finance Minister.
Krishnamachari, known for introducing path-breaking tax reforms during his stint as the Finance Minister, stepped down from the post in February 1958 after Justice Chagla Commission found him guilty of corruption in the Mundhra scam.
Following the minister's resignation, Prime Minister Nehru himself took charge of the finance portfolio and presented the Union Budget for the financial year 1958-59.
At the start of his Budget speech, Nehru said, “According to custom, the Budget statement for the coming year has to be presented today. Of an unexpected and unhappy chain of circumstances, the Finance Minister, who would normally have made this statement this afternoon, is no longer with us. This heavy-duty has fallen upon me almost at the last moment."
Calling his Budget “pedestrian”, Nehru noted that it was just in continuation to what Krishnamachari announced in the previous Budget in which he introduced “some novel taxes”.
“Last year, my distinguished predecessor in this office presented a Budget statement which, in some respects, was unusual and which involved substantial additions to taxation. Some novel taxes were introduced and an attempt was made to bring about gradually a reorientation of the tax structure of the country. I believed then, and I believe now, that this was the right direction for us to travel and that we should continue to pursue this path,” he noted.
Nehru added, “In the circumstances that we face today, I can only present before this House what might be called a pedestrian Budget statement, which is in the main a continuance of things as they are, with relatively minor changes, or such changes as naturally flow from what we did last year."
The Budget presented earlier by Krishnamachari had introduced two new taxes — wealth tax and expenditure tax.
Jawaharlal Nehru is not alone among the Prime Ministers who have presented the Union Budget.
In 1970, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi presented the Union Budget after the then Finance Minister Morarji Desai resigned from the post.
Rajiv Gandhi also presented the Union Budget for FY88 after VP Singh stepped down as the Finance Minister.