FM Nirmala Sitharaman
Credit: Reuters File Photo
New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on Saturday, created a couple of Parliamentary milestones when she presented her eighth consecutive budget, surpassing C D Deshmukh's record of seven.
She took 74 minutes to finish her latest budget speech, which ran into around 7,900 words.
If one takes consecutive full budgets, she created another record surpassing former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who presented six consecutive budgets as Finance Minister in Congress governments.
Nirmala has now presented seven full budgets and an interim budget while Deshmukh, who presented budgets between 1951 and 1956 had presented six full budgets and an interim budget. Two of Deshmukh’s budgets were before the constitution of the first Lok Sabha in 1952.
She is now ranked third with Pranab Mukherjee, who rose to become the country's President, when it comes to the total number of Budgets presented. At present, Morarji holds the record at 10 followed by P Chidambaram (9) and Pranab Mukherjee (8) and Deshmukh (7). Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Chidambaram, Mukherjee and Arun Jaitley have presented five consecutive budgets.
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Desai presented his first budget on February 28, 1959, and presented full budgets in the following two years before presenting an interim one in the election year -- 1962 -- followed by two full budgets. After a gap of four years, he presented another interim budget in 1967, followed by three full budgets in 1967, 1968, and 1969.
If she continues to be Finance Minister till at least 2028 March, she will be the record holder for presenting the budget 11 times.
Nirmala, the second woman to present a budget after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971 who held the Finance portfolio and was the first full-time Finance Minister, also holds the record for the longest budget speech when she spoke for 2:40 hours on February 1, 2020. She had then cut short her speech with two pages still remaining.
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Her shortest speech at 56 minutes was on February 1, 2024, when she presented the interim budget. Incidentally, Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel's interim Budget speech in 1977 is so far the shortest at just 800 words.
Nirmala's first budget speech July 5, 2019, was 2:17 hours long while in 2021, she took 1:50 hours and in 2022, it was 1:32 hours. The year 2023 saw a 1:27 hour speech while on July 23 last year, it took 1:22 hours to present the first full budget in the third term of Narendra Modi.
If one goes by word length, Nirmala’s first speech had 10,965 words followed by 13,349 words, 10,594 words, 9,064 words, 8,167 words, 5,271 words and 7,904 words.
Union Budget 2025 | Nirmala Sitharaman, who continues to be Finance Minister, will present her record 8th Union Budget this time. While inflation has burnt a hole in the pockets of 'aam janata', reports suggest there might be a tax relief for those making up to Rs 15 lakh per year. Track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analysis only on Deccan Herald. Also follow us on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.