From secrecy to scandal: India’s history of Budget leaks

As the countdown for the presentation of the Union Budget, the first in the second quarter of the current century, by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman began, the government mounted an exercise to quash reports of a ‘leak’. Barely 40 hours before the finance minister presents the Budget for the ninth time in a row as a member of the Narendra Modi government, the Fact Check unit of the Press Information Bureau trashed a post on a social media platform. It said the picture under circulation was a digitally altered image taken from the previous year’s document.