Finance Minister Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh and Bombay Chief Minister Morarji Ranchhodji Desai had a wildly different day on February 29, 1956. Deshmukh spent his day in Delhi, closeted with officials. A former civil servant and the first Indian to become the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, he became Finance Minister in 1950. As the country’s Finance Minister, Deshmukh piloted five Budgets. On the evening of February 29, 1956, he presented the sixth one before his Lok Sabha colleagues.

In Bombay, Desai had his hands full of well-wishers streaming into his residence to wish him on his 60th birthday. One of the visitors was Deshmukh’s colleague

M C Shah, the Minister of Revenue and Civil Expenditure. Later that day, Desai dropped a bombshell on Shah, telling him that the Government of India’s Budget had been leaked. The 1956 leak was extensively discussed in Parliament and led to changes in the Budget printing protocols.

India has a long history of protecting the secrecy of government documents. In 1889, our colonial administrators made the first law to criminalise the unauthorised disclosure of official papers. The Budget documents present an interesting confidentiality problem. The government wants to keep the Budget a secret until the Finance Minister presents it in the Lok Sabha. Among other things, it contains tax proposals whose........

© Indian Express