India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, on Wednesday presented her fifth budget and her speech, which lasted 87 minutes, also turned out to be her shortest one so far. Sitharaman’s budget speech in 2022 was close to 92 minutes, which at that time was the shortest. A year earlier, in 2021, she spoke for 110 minutes (or an hour and 50 minutes).
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The finance minister also holds the record for the longest budget speech in India’s history. In 2020, her speech was clocked at 2 hours and 40 minutes; because of her health, she was actually forced to cut it short and take a breather.
With this budget, she also became the sixth Finance Minister of Independent India to present five consecutive financial statements.
Other ministers to have achieved that feat are Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Manmohan Singh and Morarji Desai.
However, the record is held by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai who holds the record for presenting 10 budgets—the maximum by any Finance Minister.
Sitharaman is only the second woman to have presented the budget in independent India. The first was former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who presented the financial statement for the financial year 1970-71.
This year’s speech was Sitharaman’s last full-fledged budget speech of the current government as the country will be holding its general elections next year.
(With inputs from agencies)
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