Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee started presenting what was his seventh federal budget in the Lok Sabha on Friday, with a reference to the state of the global economy and its impact on India.
Ahead of the presentation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and senior cabinet colleagues had cleared the proposals in a short meeting inside Parliament House.
There were noisy protests in the house as he began reading the budget, prompting Speaker Meira Kumar to admonish the members and say that the minister was doing his constitutional duty. Mukherjee then began again, this time to attentive silence.