Budget 2026: FM Sitharaman Meets President Ahead of Budget

By: WE Staff | Sunday, 1 February 2026

• First-ever Union Budget to be presented on a Sunday in Parliament
• Nirmala Sitharaman tables her record ninth consecutive Budget
• Finance Minister meets President Murmu ahead of Budget 2026

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Sunday morning, ahead of presenting the Union Budget 2026-27 in Parliament at 11 am. The customary pre-Budget meeting, held in keeping with long-standing tradition, preceded the Cabinet’s formal approval of the Budget proposals.

This year’s Budget presentation is historic on multiple counts. It marks Sitharaman’s ninth consecutive Union Budget, extending her record as India’s longest-serving woman finance minister, and is also the first time the Union Budget is being presented on a Sunday. Before heading to Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sitharaman posed with her Budget team outside her office at Kartavya Bhavan. Dressed in a magenta silk saree, she carried the Budget tablet in a red sleeve bearing the national emblem, underscoring the continuation of India’s paperless Budget practice introduced in recent years.

Accompanied by Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and senior officials, including key secretaries from the finance ministry, Sitharaman followed the tradition she revived in 2019 by replacing the briefcase with a digital version of the ‘bahi-khata’. After meeting the President, she proceeded to the Cabinet meeting before heading to Parliament to present the Budget in the Lok Sabha.

The Union Budget 2026–27 comes at a time of mixed economic signals. While domestic demand has remained resilient and inflation has eased from recent peaks, global uncertainties persist amid ongoing geopolitical tensions, volatile commodity prices, and uneven monetary policy adjustments by major central banks. Against this backdrop, the Budget is expected to focus on sustaining India’s growth momentum, maintaining fiscal discipline, boosting consumption and job creation, and stepping up infrastructure investment, while introducing reforms to cushion the economy from global trade frictions, including potential impacts from US tariffs.