The Hindu Business Line : Finance Minister joins the leap year budget club

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NEW DELHI: The Finance Minister Mr P Chidambaram on Friday joined the leap year club presenting the country's ninth budget on that extra day which falls once in four years.

The 62-year-old lawyer turned politician, whose brush with the annual budgetary exercise began in 1996 with a 'dream budget', is closing in on Morarji Desai by presenting his seventh budget but will he equal his record is anybody's guess. Desai presente d eight budgets and had also accounted for two leap year budgets. C D Deshmukh follows Mr Chidambaram with six full budgets to his credit, followed by five each for Mr Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister and Mr Yashwant Sinha.

It will only be the ninth time since the country's independence that the budget was tabled on the last day of February (Feb.29) in a leap year. With the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's tenure due to end on May 21, 2009, the incumbent Finan ce Minister has another chance to present a budget next year. But given that it would be an election year, he may have to settle for an interim one. And it will be ifs and buts as to who will present next year's budget if elections are held earlier as be ing speculated going by the tenor of the full annual statement of accounts today.-PTI

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