PROFILE: Pranab's first priority to present budget for 2009-10

Veteran politician Pranab Mukherjee, hailed as one of the five best Finance Ministers in the world in 1984, will re-enter the North Block as Finance Minister of the new Congress-led UPA government.

Often described as a man for all seasons and seen by his party as a trusted trouble shooter, Mukherjee's first task would be to present the budget for 2009-10 and continue the measures to boost the economy reeling under the impact of global financial crisis.

As author of the interim budget for the current fiscal, it would be easier for him to prepare the full budget for the fiscal and ensure continuity in the economic policies and programmes.

The government is required to get the budget passed by Parliament by July 31 as the vote-on-account (which allows government to withdraw money from Consolidated Fund) sought in the interim budget comes to end on July 31.

Mukherjee is a veritable encyclopedia on Congress movement and has been a minister in all the party governments since the mid-1970s, save the Rajiv Gandhi government between 1984 and 1989.

The eternal 'number two', Mukherjee was a trusted lieutenant of late Indira Gandhi under whom he was the powerful Minister of State for Revenue during the emergency and later became a full-fledged Finance Minister between 1982 and 1984.