Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday presented his fifth budget in Parliament on Friday but Morarji Desai holds the record of doing so 10 times.
Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha presented 5 Budgets each while Jaswant Singh presented only one Budget.
A 96-year-old woman, Homai Vyarawala from Vadodara has sold her 55-year-old original Fiat car to buy the Tata Nano.
The finance minister is required to submit the Budget to the Parliament usually on the last day of February so that the Lok Sabha has one month to review and modify the Budget proposals.
He will travel from Katra to Ayodhya on February 7 to dedicate to the nation a mega-bridge on Sarayu River.
The earlier non-Congress prime ministers fell like nine-pins with only the late Morarji Desai remaining at the helm for two-and-a-half years as the head of the Janata Party government in the late seventies.
A host of conspiracy theories followed, involving Indira Gandhi, her younger son Sanjay, his favourite small car project, secret funding of the Bangladesh Mukti Bahini and even the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.
Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday assumed charge as the Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister for the second consecutive term and is slated to soon present the final Budget for FY '25 that is going to set the tone for the Modi 3.0 government's priorities and direction for Viksit Bharat. Upon her reaching the North Block office, Sitharaman was greeted by Finance Secretary T V Somanathan and other top officials. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary was also present. Chaudhary assumed charge on Tuesday evening.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, all from the Congress, are the three longest serving Indian prime minister in that order.
The finance minister continues to be backed by the same policy team in charting out the broad strategy as in the few earlier Budgets.
'If on the back of the resentment against the Modi government, on the very outside chance that the Congress emerges as the single largest party in May 2019, will Rahul Gandhi become prime minister?' 'Or will he do a Sonia and appoint someone else?' asks T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
We have a government with an extremely weak economic team advising a PM who hardly pays attention to their thoughts, says Jayanta Roy.
If the government of the day would like to set in place a smooth and well-planned changeover and facilitate the incoming chief to chalk out his action plan well in advance, the announcement of a successor needs to be done early, observes Colonel K Thammayya Udupa (retd).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to send out the message that the ruling BJP, unlike its predecessors at the helm, is not guided by parochial politics in recognising contributions in the public life, as the party looks to break new ground during the polls.
Modi spoke to the BJP's longest serving president, who is credited with crafting the party's rise through the 90s when it came to power for the first time as the head of coalition governments under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and congratulated him.
'The censor board asked me for some strange cuts.' 'Otherwise, they would have given me an 'A' certificate.' 'One cut was where Girish Karnad was explaining artificial insemination in cattle.' 'These cuts never made any sense to me.'
Chaudhary Charan Singh, who on Friday was conferred with India's highest civilian award Bharat Ratna, is popularly known as a champion of farmers.
A spinning wheel which former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri got as "dowry", Chaudhary Charan Singh's diaries and P V Narasimha Rao's spectacles are among the articles that their families have offered for display at the Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
Five cities -- Delhi, Shimla, Mysore, Ahmedabad and Ranchi -- were shortlisted by the Ayush ministry and sent to the Prime Minister's Office for final selection.
Times have changed, situations have changed, but the basic nature of superpower geo-politics remains the same and so also India's diplomacy -- call it non-alignment, strategic autonomy or neutrality; it all depends on the time scale, notes Rup Narayan Das.
The Indian dancer and choreographer's 112th birth anniversary was celebrated with a doodle.
Sources in the government said the ordinance is being brought as it was found to be necessary to prevent future litigations against the government for junking Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy has said that he refused to contest Lok Sabha elections because the party had offered him a ticket from Rae Bareli, that too very late.
They realised that the Portuguese were better prepared to defend Daman than Dadra and Nagar Haveli. If reinforcements from Daman were to reach Silvassa, there was no chance of defeating the Portuguese. They decided that cutting Daman's communication lines would have to be their top priority before attacking Silvassa. A fascinating excerpt from Neelesh Kulkarni's new book, Uprising-The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Given the politics behind it all, one possibility is for binding the governor to act according to the decisions of the state government and clarifying his position vis a vis bills and resolutions passed by the state assembly -- or, re-enacted if returned, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Educationist Madan Mohan Malviya and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee are the 44th and 45th distinguished personalities who have been conferred with the country's highest civilian award Bharat Ratna.
If you want to make your enemy look like a threat, at least make them formidable, sighs Sukanya Verma.
'I had expected them to fight this election on the issue of development, but they are not doing that.' 'Now they have decided to belittle Gujarat's development.'
The BJP on Thursday alleged that the opposition parties have decided to boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament building by Prime Minister Narendra Modi just because it has been built at his initiative.
Consensus emerged on the appointment of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairperson of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), while Janata Dal-United chief Nitish Kumar's name was proposed for the convener's post, pending approval of parties absent at the alliance meeting on Saturday, according to sources.
Making a strong attack against Narendra Modi, whom he termed a "megalomaniac psychopath liar", Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh on Sunday stoked a fresh controversy saying why can the Bharatiya Janata Party not field a "better leader" like Sushma Swaraj as its prime ministerial candidate.
There may be those who could want to go slow, citing the large pendency of follow-up action and court cases that they would have to process and/or proceed with, before raiding more politicians, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The president-elect has vast public, social, and political experience which will help him better to discharge his duty as the First Citizen of India.
Venkataraman Krishnamurthy, who is considered as the turnaround man of several Indian corporate houses like BHEL, Maruti Udyog, SAIL and Gail (India), passed away on Sunday at the age of 97. Krishnamurthy is considered as "the father of public sector undertakings in India" by many in India Inc. Born in the temple town of Tamil Nadu's Karuveli, he started his career as an airfield technician during the Second World War.
Rahul Gandhi is neither Congress president, office-bearer nor Congress leader in Parliament. This technical leeway provides adequate cover for Shiv Sena-Congress ties taking a nosedive, says Rasheed Kidwai.
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