Union Budget 2026: Making new records & surpassing old ones: Nirmala Sitharaman presents 9th budget in Parliament

New Delhi: Presented on Sunday for the first time and prepared in a new office but printed in the press in the old office, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman created Parliamentary records when she presented her ninth consecutive budget.

Nirmala, India's only second woman Finance Minister after Indira Gandhi, had presented the budgets on Saturday twice -- in 2020 and 2025.

With the Budget for 2026-27, Nirmala has equalled the record of P Chidambaram, who presented nine budgets but only five have the distinction of being consecutive.

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This is the first time a Budget is presented on a Sunday while she had the honour of presenting it on Saturday twice -- in 2020 and 2025. This is also the first Budget that was prepared in the new office of the Ministry of Finance in Kartavya Bhavan.

However, the printing of the Budget papers were in the press set up in the basement of the Ministry's old office in the North Bloc, as the new Budget press installed in Kartavya Bhavan is yet to be fully operational.

The quarantine of officials involved in Budget preparation and the 'halwa' ceremony signalling the start of the final leg of preparations was held at North Bloc.

Nirmala milestones

* Presented 9th Consecutive Budgets -- 8 full budgets and one interim budget

* Holds record of presenting highest no. of consecutive budgets

* Second woman to present a budget after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971

* Morarji Desai presented a total of 10 budgets; 6 of them consecutive

* CD Deshmukh presented seven consecutive budgets; Two of them before the constitution of the first Lok Sabha in 1952

* Equals P Chidambaram's record of presenting a total of nine budgets; five of them consecutive

* Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Mukherjee and Arun Jaitley also presented five consecutive budgets

-- presents Budget on Sunday for the first time

-- If she continues to be Finance Minister till at least 2028 March, she will be the record holder for presenting the budget for 11 times

-- In 2019, she replaced leather briefcase -- uses for carrying Budget documents for decades -- with a traditional 'bahi-khata' wrapped in red cloth

Also

* holds the record for the longest budget speech in Feb 2020

* shortest in Feb 2024

* 2019 -- 2:17 hours -- 10,965 words

* 2020 -- 2:40 hours -- 13,349 words

* 2021 -- 1:50 hours -- 10,594 words

* 2022 -- 1:32 hours -- 9,064 words

* 2023 -- 1:27 hours -- 8,167 words

* 2024 -- 56 min (Feb) 5,271 words

* 2024 -- 1:22 hours (July) -- 7,904 words

* 2025 -- 1:14 hours -- around 7,900 words

Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel's interim Budget speech in 1977 is so far the shortest at just 800 words.