Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented the Budget 2019 on Friday, the sixth union budget by the NDA government, as Union Minister Arun Jaitley is in the US for medical treatment. The finance minister gave more money to the middle class, introduced a pension scheme for the unorganised sector and guaranteed income to the small farmer.
LIVE Updates:
Policy changes in the Interim budgets of the past few years
- In 1991, finance minister Yashwant Sinha presented the vote-on-account of the Chandra Shekhar government, he had announced the country’s first policy on disinvestment.
ALSO READ: The making of the Union Budget; what goes on behind the scenes
- In 2004, Jaswant Singh while presenting the interim budget for the Vajpayee-led NDA government merged dearness allowance with basic pay and extended the exemption of long-term capital gains tax. He had also halved the stamp duty.
- In the interim budget in 2014, P. Chidambaram met the long-pending demand of the Armed Forces to have ‘One Rank One Pension’ (OROP), a key poll promise with an eye on the electorally significant community of veterans.