Why Railway Budget was merged in Union Budget

In 2017, the Railway Budget was merged with the Union Budget, ending a practice that began in 1924 under the British.

A Niti Aayog commission submitted a white paper recommendation to do away with the practice. The recommendation was submitted to then Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.

He wrote a letter to the then-Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to merge the Railway and Union Budgets for the welfare of the Railways and the Indian economy.

Arun Jaitely brought this up in 2016 at the Rajya Sabha and a special committee was constituted to plan the merger of both the Budgets.