Towards more openness

The forthcoming Budget will achieve many firsts, but future Budgets should be cast in a different mould

- A K BHATTACHARYA

The Union Budget for 2026-27, to be presented on February 1, is set to claim credit for achieving many firsts.

The most obvious of them is the presentation of the Budget on a Sunday. No finance minister of India since Independence has presented the Union Budget on a Sunday. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be the first. She will also be the first finance minister to present the eighth consecutive full Budget, in addition to an interim Budget, which strictly is not a Budget but a vote on account.

Another first for Ms Sitharaman would be that, for the first time in her tenure as finance minister, she will present a Budget without a formally designated finance secretary under her command. In all her previous seven full Budgets, she had a finance secretary in place to steer the Budget-making exercise. But the finance ministry has had no finance secretary since the last incumbent, Ajay Seth, superannuated and joined the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) as its chairman at the end of June 2025. However, it must be noted that the secretaries’ team — seven in all — at the head of the ministry during this period has remained stable and unchanged.

Of course, a view has gained ground of late that designating one of the secretaries in the ministry as the finance secretary does not make a major difference to the way a Budget is prepared. Economic Affairs Secretary Anuradha Thakur is also in charge of the Budget Division in her department and has been coordinating with other departments on work related to Budget-making. But in practical terms, there is a difference. A designated finance secretary at the helm can coordinate the Budget-making exercise with greater effectiveness within the ministry as also in interacting with other key central ministries and even the states on various revenue and expenditure imperatives.