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Budget 2024: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the interim Budget for financial year 2024-25 on February 1, 2024. It would be her sixth consecutive Budget since 2019. Other Finance Ministers who have presented at least five consecutive Union Budgets include Morarji Desai, P Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, and Arun Jaitley.
Here are some interesting facts about the Budget presentation in the country:
First Budget
India has a 163-year-old legacy of Budget presentations in the country. The first Budget was introduced in the country by James Wilson, a Scottish economist, and politician, on April 7, 1860, under East India Company rule. Post-independence, the first Budget was presented on November 26, 1947, by then-Finance Minister R.K. Shanmukham Chetty. There have been 75 annual Budgets, 14 interim Budgets and four special Budgets, presented in the country since Independence.
Longest and shortest Budget speech
Nirmala Sitharaman, the current finance minister, set the record for giving the longest speech on February 1, 2020, when she presented the Union Budget for 2020–21. She spoke for two hours and 42 minutes. During the course of her speech, Sitharaman beat her own record set in July 2019 when she delivered her maiden Budget, speaking for two hours and 17 minutes.
On the other hand, the shortest Budget of India was presented by Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel in 1977, in which he spoke just 800 words. Patel served as Finance Minister of India from 1977 to 1979 under the Morarji Desai-led government.
Most words in Budget speech
In 1991, then-Finance Minister Manmohan Singh—under the Narasimha Rao government—delivered the longest Budget speech in terms of words, clocking in at 18,650 words. Arun Jaitley is second on the list, with 18,604 words in his 2018 Budget speech. Jaitley took one hour and 49 minutes to complete his speech.
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Budget presentation by prime minister
The finance minister is generally entrusted with presenting the Union Budget every year. However, there have been instances when the Budget was presented by the prime minister of the nation.
Pandit Jawaharlal Lal Nehru was the first prime minister to present a Union Budget. In 1958, then-Finance Minister TT Krishnamachari resigned due to his alleged involvement in the Haridas Mundhra controversy. Hence, Pandit Nehru was forced to present the Union Budget. Again in 1970, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi presented the Budget after Finance Minister Morarji Desai resigned in protest of the nationalisation of 14 Indian private banks without consulting him. Similarly, in 1987-88, the then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi presented the Budget when Finance Minister VP Singh resigned.
Paperless Budget
Nirmala Sitharaman set another record in Covid pandemic-hit 2021 by presenting the first paperless Budget. She presented the Union Budget 2021-22 in digital format. The finance minister read her Budget speech in Parliament via a digital tablet. Upon completion of the speech, the Budget documents were made available through mobile apps. In 2023, Sitharaman further continued with the tradition of paperless Budgets. While in 2021 the paperless Budget was presented to minimise physical contact in the time of Covid-19, it has now become the practice.
