5 Unknown facts about Piyush Goyal, the man presenting Interim Budget 2019

Piyush Goyal’s father Ved Prakash Goyal was a senior party leader and treasurer and helped party rise to power via oil machinery

File image Piyush Goyal/ PTI

New Delhi: Union Minister for Finance, Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal will be presenting the Interim Budget 2019 on Friday, as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has not been keeping well. Here are some unknown facts about Piyush Goyal and the Budget 2019.

• This isn’t the first time he has been handed the additional charge of Finance Ministry, even earlier between 14 May to 22 August 2018, while FM Jaitley was recuperating from a kidney transplant; Goyal took over the seat; hence he is also known as “Modi’s man for all seasons”

 

• Piyush Goyal’s father Ved Prakash Goyal was a senior party leader and treasurer and helped party rise to power via oil machinery

 

• Piyush Goyal was the only minister in PM Modi cabinet to criticise former RBI governor Urjit Patel, the PM’s former top banker who quit in early December 2018

 

• A significant part of Piyush Goyal’s speech which he is set to present in Parliament is said to have been written by Arun Jaitley, who is getting treated for an unnamed illness in the US

 

• Right ahead of Budget 2019, Piyush Goyal was awarded the Carnot Prize for his contribution towards sustainable energy solutions by the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday