Veterans, fresh faces ready finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s 9th Budget

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is due to present a record ninth consecutive budget, is working with a team of officials which is a mix of experience and fresh faces.It is likely that for the first time in recent years, she will not have a finance secretary, a first among equals, leaving it to Anuradha Thakur to coordinate the exercise. Public enterprises secretary K Moses Chelai is the senior most secretary in the departments that are part of Sitharaman’s team, but his department has little to do with the budget exercise.Only four members from the last budget team remain – CBDT chairman Ravi Agrawal, Dipam secretary Arunish Chawla, financial services secretary M Nagaraju and chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran. The three key secretaries, V Vualnam (expenditure), Arvind Shrivastava (revenue) and Thakur (economic affairs) took over their current roles this summer.

Vivek Chaturvedi took over as Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) chairman in Dec and Vyasan R, the joint secretary in-charge of the budget division, also moved into his current assignment only a few months ago. Of course, Vyasan is no stranger to the budget exercise as he was part of the team earlier as well.In fact, revenue secretary Shrivastava too is a veteran, having led the budget division for several years, before moving to the Prime Minister’s Office, where he was part of the discussions for the annual exercise that not only focuses on the Centre’s receipts and budget but also includes key policy and reform-related announcements.Since Sitharaman moved into North Block in 2019, she has dealt with several officers with long tenures in the finance ministry – T V Somanathan was expenditure secretary before he took over as Cabinet secretary last year, Ajay Seth, who was economic affairs secretary, and Tuhin Kanta Pandey, the longest-serving Dipam secretary, who was finance secretary and in-charge of revenue during the last budget. This year, the expenditure department will have an additional role as the Finance Commission’s recommendations are being reviewed and the devolution formula along with the other proposals will be announced in the budget.