Finance minister P Chidambaram will begin the day with a visit to president Pranab Mukherjee to seek his permission to present the union budget 2013 in parliament. This is a customary protocol as the president is the final authority on consolidated funds and is the keeper of economy.

At 1015 hours, when Chidambaram enters the gate number one of parliament, he will pose for 300 to 400 TV and still cameras along with his two union ministers of state Namo Narain Meena and SS Palanimanickam.

Chidambaram will certainly miss the guidance and presence of Pranab Mukherjee at 1045 hours when he opens the 2013 budget secrets before 34 of his cabinet colleagues. Of course, prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh knows the contents of the budgetary proposals.

Immediately after this, Chidambaram will walk into the Lok Sabha accompanied by Kamal Nath and other senior ministers to present the last budget of the UPA.

This will be Chidambaram’s 8th budget in parliament. And he tells close friends that he owes this to his Sivaganga voters who reposed faith in him for a record seven times.

Chidambaram has issued an affectionate gag order to his family members. They are supposed to give no interviews to print or TV channels about his budget. However, he has allowed his 12-year-old granddaughter to join other family members to watch him present the budget from the visitors’ gallery.

The credit for maintaining the secrecy of budgetary proposal goes to Asif Ibrahim who led a 235-member team for the job.  Ibrahim is director, Intelligence Bureau.

According to colleagues, Ibrahim, for the past two days, has been visiting the printing press many a time and monitoring four key officials who wrote and read the contents of the 2013 budget. 

MoS SS Palanimanickam is the only union minister who has continued without a break as the minister for revenue since 2004. He has so far posed ten times for the group photos outside North Block when two finance ministers, P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee, went from North Block to parliament to present their budgets.

Palanimanickam is a DMK nominee in Dr Manmohan Singh council of ministers.