• The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act was enacted in 2003, which set targets for the government to reduce fiscal deficits. The targets were put off several times.

• In 2016, the government set up a committee under N. K. Singh to review the FRBM Act. The government believed that the targets were too rigid. The committee recommended that the government should target a fiscal deficit of 3 per cent of the GDP in years up to March 31, 2020, cut it to 2.8 per cent in 2020-21 and 2.5 per cent by 2023.

• In Budget 2017, the then Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, deferred the fiscal deficit target of 3% of the GDP and chose a target of 3.2%, citing the N. K. Singh Committee report. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India had pulled up the government for deferring the targets, which, it said, should have been done through amending the Act.