On Thursday, Arun Jaitley will become fifth Finance Minister joining the exclusive league of Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, P Chidambaram and Morarji Desai, who past 71 years have presented five consecutive Budgets. Ahead of walking into the Lok Sabha to begin his Budget speech, Union Cabinet under Prime Minister Modi will meet to approve the Finance Bill. In 1974, the then finance minister YB Chavan went ahead presenting the Budget even though a minister MB Rana had died. Since it is the last full-fledged Budget of the current government, Jaitley may have to present a "please all" document. Prime Minister Modi has himself expressed concern over negligible job creation and hence Jaitley may focus on industrial investment, infrastructure, banking and disinvestment of public sector enterprises.

Source: dna February 01, 2018 00:17 UTC