By Admin 
Budget 2026: Today, when the general budget is presented in Parliament on 1 February, it seems to be a normal process. However, hardly anyone pays attention to the story behind it. Actually, the date and time of the budget were not always like this. There is a long history behind their replacement.
Till a few years ago, the general budget was presented on 28 February. With time, changes were made in it according to the administrative and economic needs of the country. Because of which the budget is being presented today on 1st February. Let us know the story behind this…
There was a tradition of presenting the budget on 28 February.
Before 2017, the general budget in the country was presented every year on the last day of February. Which was a tradition going on since the time of British rule. At that time, it was believed that after the presentation of the budget, there was enough time to implement it from April 1.
But with time this system started facing problems. The time between the budget and its implementation started decreasing. Due to which states and ministries had to face difficulties in preparing new schemes. Many times even important files were not completed on time.
Decision to present the budget on February 1
In view of the problems being faced in budget preparations, in the year 2017, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took an important decision to change the date of the budget. After this, the general budget started being presented in the beginning of February i.e. on 1 February.
Due to which the Center and the states got about two months time to implement the schemes. This change not only made work on new schemes easier, but also ended the old tradition that had been going on since the British era.
Why was the budget time changed?
In the year 1999, during the tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the old tradition related to the time of presenting the budget was changed. Till that time the budget was presented at 5 pm, which was done due to the influence of the British era system. Because in Britain the budget used to come at 11 am in the morning and in India the same time was 5 pm.
The then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed this arrangement and decided to present the budget at 11 am. He believed that if the budget comes early in the day, then MPs, experts and common people will get the whole day to understand and discuss it. Since then the general budget in India is being presented at 11 am only.
Also read: Entry of two SME IPOs in the stock market today; An issue in the gray market is giving strong signals, know the details