Union Budget 2019: What is Union Budget and everything you need to know about it

Newly appointed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the Union Budget 2019 on Friday, July 5, in the second term of the Narendra Modi government. It will be the maiden budget for Sitharaman, who is the second woman finance minister after Indira Gandhi to do the same in the history of independent India. 

What is the Union Budget?

Article 112 of the Indian Constitution describes the Union Budget as the annual financial statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government of India for a particular year, that is presented before the Houses of Parliament. Union Budget is classified into Revenue Budget, which includes the government's revenue receipts and expenditure, and the Capital Budget that consists of capital receipts and payments. 

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Here's what you need to know about the Union Budget 2019:

This will be the 89th Union budget, which is the financial statement of the government, detailing its revenue and expenditure in the past, as well as estimated spending and projections for the coming year. 

The Railway Budget will also be presented today along with the Union Budget, as has been the case since 2016. The Budget speech will begin around 11:00 am today with Sitharaman addressing to the speaker of Lok Sabha. Usually, the duration of the presentation ranges from 90 to 120 minutes.

The Finance Minister on Thursday tabled in Parliament the pre-Budget Economic Survey for 2018-19, which projected the state of the economy and outlined its challenges. The survey was released by Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian on Thursday, June 4.

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Who introduced Budget 2019?

With the Lok Sabha 2019 elections in April-May, the Interim Union Budget of India for the year 2019 was presented by interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on February 1, 2019. The government introduced Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi and Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Mandhan in the interim budget.

Some interesting facts about the Union Budget:  

• The first Union Budget of Independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by RK Shanmukham Chetty and the first Budget of the Republic of India was presented by John Mathai on February 28, 1950.
• Till 2016, the Union Budget was presented on the last working day of February. Former finance minister Arun Jaitley, however, changed that tradition in 2017 and presented the Budget on February 1. In the same year, the 92-year-old practice of presenting the Railway Budget days before the Union budget was also abolished and it was presented along with the Union Budget. 
• The longest budget speech in terms of words was given by Manmohan Singh in 1991. It comprised of 18,177 words.
• There is an annual ritual of the Finance Minister posing with the 'Budget Briefcase' outside the Parliament before the presentation of the budget. This ritual traces back to 1947 India when the then Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty presented the first ever budget of independent India.
• A symbolic 'Halwa' ceremony is observed ahead of the presentation of the budget every year to mark the launch of formal printing of documents. Around 10 days or so before the documents go for printing, Halwa (pudding) is cooked in a large vessel and distributed to officials directly associated with the Budget.