Union Budget 2024: Nirmala Sitharaman Sets Record With 80-Minute Speech In 7th Consecutive Budget Presentation

Nirmala Sitharaman equaled a Parliamentary milestone by delivering a 1:32-hour (80 minute) speech during her seventh consecutive Union Budget presentation, on Teusday.

This has been achieved previously by C.D. Deshmukh 68 years ago. Both Deshmukh, who presented budgets between 1951 and 1956, and Sitharaman had presented six full budgets and one interim budget each. Deshmukh's budgets included two presented before the constitution of the first Lok Sabha in 1952.

Nirmala Sitharaman And Her Budget Speech Records

In terms of consecutive full budgets, Sitharaman shares the record with former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who presented six consecutive budgets as Finance Minister in Congress governments. Sitharaman, who is the second woman to present a budget after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971, also holds the record for the longest budget speech, which lasted 2:40 hours on February 1, 2020, as reported by Deccan Herald.

During that speech, she had to cut short her address with two pages remaining. Her shortest speech, which was 56 minutes long, was delivered on February 1 this year when she presented the interim budget. The shortest interim budget speech recorded so far was given by Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel in 1977, at just 800 words.

Sitharaman's first budget speech on July 5, 2019, lasted 2:17 hours, followed by a 1:50-hour speech in 2021 and a 1:32-hour speech in 2022. Her 2023 speech lasted 1:27 hours. In terms of word length, Sitharaman's first speech had 10,965 words, followed by 13,349 words, 10,594 words, 9,064 words, 8,167 words, and 5,271 words in subsequent years, as reported by Deccan Herald.

If Sitharaman continues as Finance Minister until at least March 2028, she will set a new record by presenting the budget 11 times. Currently, the record is held by Morarji Desai with 10 budgets, followed by P. Chidambaram with 9 and Pranab Mukherjee with 8, alongside Deshmukh and Sitharaman, each with 7. Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Chidambaram, Mukherjee, and Arun Jaitley have each presented five consecutive budgets, as per media reports.

Desai's tenure included his first budget presentation on February 28, 1959, followed by two full budgets in the subsequent years, an interim budget in the election year of 1962, and then two additional full budgets. After a four-year gap, he presented another interim budget in 1967, followed by three full budgets in 1967, 1968, and 1969.