Railway budget of India

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Railway budget of India was the Annual Financial Statement for Indian Railways administered by the Railway Board, which handles rail transport in India. It was presented every year by the Minister of Railways, representing the Ministry of Railways, in the Parliament.

The Railway Budget was presented every year, a few days before the Union budget, till 2016. Modi government on 21 September 2016 approved merger of the Rail and General budgets from the next year, ending a 92-year-old practice of a separate budget for the nation's largest transporter.The decision to merge the Railway Budget with the Union Budget was made in 2016, following the submission of a white paper titled 'Dispensing with the Railway Budget' by the NITI Aayog Committee chaired by Bibek Debroy.^[1] The paper was presented to Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu said that this merger proposal was in the long term interest of railways as well as the country's economy and was a colonial practice that needed to be ended.^[2]