Union Budget: When Prime Minister, instead of finance minister, presented the budget

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2025 in the parliament on February 1. While the budget is mostly presented by the finance minister, there are rare occasions when someone else could also turn up to do so. Even the Prime Minister.

While in numerous cases, a finance minister went on to become the PM after some years, there have been three occasions when a Prime Minister presented the Union Budget in the parliament, mostly because they held the finance portfolio. The first time it happened was in 1958 while the last time a PM gave a budget speech was in 1987.