Budget 2019: What is the Union Budget and Everything you need to know about it

Piyush Goyal, standing in for Arun Jaitley as the Finance Minister on a temporary basis, on Friday will present the interim Union budget for the year 2019, which will incidentally be the final budget to be presented by the ruling NDA government ahead of the Lok Sabha polls later this year.

Union budget is presented every year on February 1, a tradition which began in 2017, with the government announcing the amount of funds which shall be set aside for specific areas and fields across the country. Right from health care to agriculture to taxation to banking, the Finance Minister will highlight the expenditure, receipts and policies for the upcoming financial year (April 2019-March 2020).

As the people of India brace themselves for the Budget-day, here's all you need to know about it:

• The Union budget is also known as the Annual Financial Statement in the Article 112 of the Constitution of India
• RK Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947 presented the first ever Union budget of India post independence
• Morarji Desai has presented the most number of budgets (10), followed by P Chidambaram (9), Pranab Mukherjee (8) and the likes of Yashwant Sinha, Yashwantrao Chavan and C.D. Deshmukh (6 each)
• 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
• Ever since independence, and even before that, the Rail budget was being presented earlier than the Union budget. But two years ago, the NDA govt shunned that idea and decided to merge the two and present them together
• Two decades ago, then Finance Minister of NDA, Yashwant Sinha broke away from the ritual of the budget being presented at 5 pm. In 1999, for the first time, the Union budget was presented at 11 am, and since then, it has carried on
• The previous interim budget was presented by P Chidambaran in 2014 before the Lok Sabha polls
• The budget has to be passed in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha before it can be put into effect from April 1

Budget 2019 LIVE UPDATES: 'Interim Budget' With Potential 5-year Impact Beckons As Piyush Goyal Tables Modi Government's Election-year Vote-on-Account

This time around, there will be an interim, and not full budget, presented given Lok Sabha polls are to take place just a couple of months later. An interim budget in the election year is presented because should the ruling government not come back to power post-polls, the new government will be presenting a new full budget after coming to power.

Catch Budget 2019 Live and Piyush Goel’s interim budget speech. Check this space for all the latest news, live updates and headlines from Union Budget 2019. Republic World brings to you the latest developments across all sectors of Union Budget 2019.