Budget 2023: From Nirmala Sitharaman's longest budget speech to 'most words' in budget speech - Interesting facts of Indian budget speeches

Budget 2023: Union Budget for the financial year 2023-24 will be presented on February 1 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. This would be her fifth straight Union Budget speech.
Sitharaman holds the record for presenting the longest budget of the country. But do you know who delivered the shortest budget speech ever? Here are a few interesting facts on Union Budget speeches:

The Shortest Budget Speech

In 1977, former Finance Minister Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel presented the country's smallest budget. That was the interim budget. It was introduced on March 28, 1977. The budget speech that year consisted of 800 words.

The Longest Budget Speech

FM Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for giving the longest budget speech. She spoke continuously for 2.42 hours while presenting the Union Budget 2020. With two pages not read, she had to cut her speech short as she felt unwell.

Also, read- Budget 2023: How does India earn? What is the math behind it?

Most words in Budget Speech

In 1991, then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh delivered the longest budget speech in terms of words (18,650 words) under the Narasimha Rao government.
Arun Jaitley joined the list in 2018 when he delivered budget speech in 18,604 words. His speech was of 1 hour and 49 minutes.

Who has presented the budget the maximum number of times? (FMs with most budgets)

Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai holds the record of presenting highest number of budgets in history. During his tenure as Finance Minister in 1962-69, he presented 10 budgets, followed by P Chidambaram, who presented 9 budgets, Pranab Mukherjee 8, Yashwant Sinha 8 and Manmohan Singh 6 respectively.

Budget Timings

Since the British era, it was a practice that the budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of the month of February. In 1999, the then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed the timing of the budget to 11 am.

However, in 2017 Arun Jaitley changed the budget day. From the last working day of February, it was changed to the first day of February i.e. 1st February.

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