Looking back: Tamil Nadu Finance Ministers and their Budgets

As Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu is set to present the fifth State Budget of the current DMK regime for 2025-26 on Friday (March 14, 2025), here’s a look at Finance Ministers and select budgets tabled in the Assembly since Independence.

As Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu is set to present the fifth State Budget of the current DMK regime for 2025-26 on Friday (March 14, 2025), here’s a look at Finance Ministers and select Budgets tabled in the Assembly since Independence.

B. Gopala Reddi, who presented four Budgets (1948 to 1951), created history on February 25, 1948, by submitting the State’s first Budget in independent India. He had the distinction of having the then Governor Archibald Nye personally watching his performance by sitting in the Governor’s box of the Assembly for some time. Touching upon the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in his Budget speech, Reddi announced that Prohibition would cover the entire State by October, the birth month of Gandhi. The move would entail a total loss of ₹17 crore.

A.B. Shetty presented the interim Budget for 1952-53 in March 1952, in view of the delay in the formation of the Council of Ministers after the election to the Assembly. Pointing out that the State, then encompassing many parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala, had suffered for the fifth successive year from “adverse seasonal conditions,” Shetty referred to “famine conditions” in Rayalaseema and other drought-hit districts and expressed hope that his government’s request to the Union government for substantial assistance “would evoke a favourable response in quick time.”

C. Subramaniam, the only Tamil Nadu Finance Minister (1952-1962) to become a Union Finance Minister (October 1974-March 1977), was a key figure in 13 Budgets. In his first Budget, he proposed the levy of surcharge of one pie per mile on passengers travelling by public transport buses as one of the measures to meet a revenue deficit of about ₹3.6 crore. Governor Sri Prakasa delivered his customary address to the House on the morning of June 27, 1952, and the Budget was presented in the evening, prompting a prominent Opposition member P.P. Ramamurti to point out that the debate on the Governor’s address should precede the Budget — an objection overruled by Speaker Sivashanmugam Pillai. In the Budget for 1957-58, Subramaniam announced the provision of ₹10 lakh for the supply of midday meals to poor children in primary schools, in addition to effecting re-adjustment in General Sales Tax and increase in the Agricultural Income Tax on plantation to partially meet the deficit of ₹4.83 crore.

M. Bhaktavatsalam, who became Finance Minister after the 1962 poll and presented four more Budgets, announced the establishment of a Regional Engineering College in Tiruchi with an annual intake of 250 students, with the Union government providing about ₹60 lakh and the State government, the cost of land and recurring expenditure. He referred to the “liberal assistance” of ₹3 crore by the organisation CARE, based in the U.S., to the midday meal scheme in the form of rice, wheat milk powder, and vegetable oil during 1961-62. He mentioned that an Industrial Adviser would be hired to prepare project reports for metallurgical and engineering industries, and such reports would be given free of cost to prospective industrialists.

C.N. Annadurai, who led the DMK and its allies to a stunning victory over the Congress in 1967, was the second Chief Minister-Finance Minister of the State since Independence. In his maiden Budget speech, he observed that apart from Constitutional provisions, practices and conventions evolved in the last 15 years of economic planning had “tended to strengthen the role of the Central government at the expense of States.” He announced the State government would award gold medals annually to inter-caste couples. A sum of ₹10 lakh was set apart for initiating the project of drawing Cauvery water for Chennai. He announced the government would take over three private electricity licensees in the then composite Thanjavur district — Kumbakonam Electric Licence; Nagapattinam Electric Licence; and Mayavaram [Mayiladuthurai]-Mannargudi-Tiruvarur Electric Licence — “without further delaly.” He made it clear that his government had no intention to scrap Prohibition and in the Legislative Council. Annadurai said the “voluntary cut” of 50% in the salary of Ministers would save ₹54,000 annually. He presented one more Budget.

K.A. Mathialagan, who became Finance Ministe following Annadurai’s death in February 1969, had also submitted two Budgets. In March 1970, he announced the decision to amend the Land Ceiling Act to lower the ceiling limit from 30 standard acres to 15 standard acres. Chennai would be made free of slums in a phased manner over seven years, for which ₹1 crore had been provided.