As Nirmala Sitharaman takes charge as Finance Minister, timeline for first Budget of Modi Sarkar 2.0 likely to be decided at first cabinet meeting: Sources

As Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman took charge of the office of Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Corporate Affairs on May 31, minutes after the announcement of the list of Council of Ministers, sources have told Republic TV that the timeline of the Union Budget for the new government will be decided during the first cabinet meeting, which is reportedly scheduled to take place around 5-5:30 PM on Friday. The meeting will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the South Block office in the Secretariat, New Delhi.

The first session of the Parliament is likely to begin in June, with the dates of the first Parliament session likely to be finalised during the first meeting of the new Cabinet on Friday. 

Previously in 2014, the NDA government's first Union Budget was presented by former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on July 14. 

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Previously on February 1 ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Piyush Goyal, who was appointed as the Finance Minister on a temporary basis in the absence of the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, presented the interim Union budget for the year 2019, which served as the final budget by the ruling NDA government. 

Notably, the Union Budget is presented by the Government on February 1, so that it could be materialized before the commencement of a new financial year in April. In 2017, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley began a new era by presenting the budget on the February 1, walking away from the age-old tradition of it being presented on the final day of February

The budget has to be passed in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha before it can be put into effect from April 1. 

On May 31, Nirmala Sitharaman has taken over the Minister of Finance replacing Arun Jaitley, who served as the Finance Minister in the first Modi Cabinet. Notably, she is the first woman to take the position as the Finance Minister of India independently under Narendra Modi government after former PM Indira Gandhi, who served as the Finance Minister under her government as the Prime Minister. 

Along with Sitharaman, BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh's Hamirpur, Anurag Thakur has been appointed as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance as well as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Both the Union Minister and MoS have taken charge to their office on Friday afternoon:

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