Ms Sitharaman will present her sixth straight budget, equalling the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. During his tenure as finance minister, Desai presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964.
The Finance Minister also holds the record for the longest Budget speech – 2 hours and 42 minutes – which she delivered in 2020.
Ms Sitharaman will present an Interim Budget as the Lok Sabha elections are due in April-May. The full Budget will be presented by the newly elected government.
Ahead of the start of the Budget Session of Parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed confidence that he would achieve a third straight victory and said that the full budget will be presented by a BJP-led government when it is formed after the Lok Sabha polls.
Experts said Ms Sitharaman and the BJP will have to walk a fine line between pleasing various sections of people in an election year and keeping the fiscal deficit in check.
Being an interim budget, major policy changes or big announcements may not be made, but expectations are still high.
Salaried taxpayers are hoping for a change in income tax slabs, a higher standard deduction limit and a hike in exemptions under Sections 80C and 80D.
For Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the expectation is that the government will bring in policies to ease regulatory procedures, reduce compliance burdens and provide greater access to loans.
Addressing a joint sitting of the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday, President Droupadi Murmu said that the government is moving ahead with the guarantee of fulfilling the dreams of 140 crore countrymen.
Opposition members, however, claimed the government had written an “election speech” for the President and said that issues such as income inequality, unemployment and price rise had not been addressed.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the chief executives of TikTok, X, Discord and Snap faced a grilling by hostile US lawmakers on Wednesday over the dangers that children and teens face on social media platforms.

The tech chiefs were convened by the US Senate Judiciary Committee where they were put to task about the effects of social media in a session titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.”

The executives are confronting a torrent of political anger for not doing enough to thwart online dangers for children, including from sexual predators and teen suicide.

During one round of particularly heated questioning, Zuckerberg was made to stand up and apologize to the families of victims who had packed the committee room.

“Mister Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands. You have a product that’s killing people,” Senator Lindsey Graham told the chief executives.

Testifying to senators were Zuckerberg, X’s Linda Yaccarino, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, Evan Spiegel of Snap and Discord’s Jason Citron.

“We work hard to provide parents and teens support and controls to reduce potential harms,” Meta’s Zuckerberg told the committee in his opening statement.

“Keeping young people safe online has been a challenge since the internet began and as criminals evolve their tactics, we have to evolve our defenses too,” he added.

Zuckerberg also told the lawmakers that according to research, “on balance” social media was not harmful to the mental health of young people.

TikTok’s Chew said “as a father of three young children myself I know that the issues that we’re discussing today are horrific and the nightmare of every parent.”

“I intend to invest more than $2 billion in trust and safety. This year alone, we have 40,000 safety professionals working on this topic,” Chew said.

Meta also said 40,000 of its employees work on online safety and that $20 billion has been invested since 2016 to make the platform safer.

Ahead of their testimony, Meta and X, formerly Twitter, announced new measures in anticipation of the heated session.

Meta, which owns the world’s leading platforms Facebook and Instagram, said it would block direct messages sent to young teens by strangers.

By default, teens under age 16 can now only be messaged or added to group chats by people they already follow or are connected to.

Meta also tightened content restrictions for teens on Instagram and Facebook making it harder for them to view posts that discuss suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.

Multi-state lawsuit

Singling out Meta, senators pointed to internal company documents that show that Zuckerberg declined to strengthen the teams devoted to tracking online dangers to teens.

“The hypocrisy is mind-boggling,” Senator Richard Blumenthal told the New York Times.

Those documents are part of a major lawsuit brought by about 40 states jointly suing Meta over alleged failures with children.

Under US law, web platforms are largely shielded from legal liability in relation to content that is shared on their site.

While lawmakers would like to set up more rules to increase online safety, new laws have been stymied by a politically divided Washington and intense lobbying by big tech.

One existing proposal is the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, which aims to protect children from algorithms that might trigger anxiety or depression.

Another idea would require social media platforms to verify the age of account holders and completely bar children under the age of 13.

“I don’t think you’re gonna solve the problem. Congress is gonna have to help you,” Senator John Neely Kennedy told the executives.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday posed with her digital tablet as she headed to Parliament to present the interim budget.

She also posed for a picture outside the Ministry of Finance in the national capital along with her team before presenting her sixth straight budget, equalling the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.

#WATCH | Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman along with her team before the presentation of the country’s interim Budget pic.twitter.com/hohpB7qtZi

— ANI (@ANI) February 1, 2024

Ms Sitharaman will present an interim budget as the Lok Sabha elections are due in April-May. The full budget will be presented by the newly-elected government, most likely in July.

Being an interim budget, major policy changes or big announcements may not be made, but expectations are still high. 

Salaried taxpayers are hoping for a change in income tax slabs, a higher standard deduction limit and a hike in exemptions under Sections 80C and 80D.

For Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the expectation is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government will bring in policies to ease regulatory procedures, reduce compliance burdens and provide greater access to loans.