New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman achieved a Parliamentary milestone this morning by presenting her seventh consecutive Budget, a feat previously achieved only by C.D. Deshmukh 68 years ago.
Both Deshmukh, who presented Budgets between 1951 and 1956, and Nirmala Sitharaman have presented six full Budgets and an interim Budget each. Two of Deshmukh’s Budgets were presented before the Constitution of the first Lok Sabha in 1952.
In terms of consecutive full Budgets, Nirmala Sitharaman shares the record with former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who also presented six consecutive Budgets.
Nirmala Sitharaman, the second woman to present a Budget after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971, who held the Finance portfolio, and the first full-time Finance Minister, also holds the record for the longest Budget speech, which lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes on Feb. 1, 2020.
Her shortest speech, at 56 minutes, was on Feb. 1 this year when she presented the interim Budget. Her first Budget speech on July 5, 2019, was 2 hours and 17 minutes long, while in 2021, she took 1 hour and 50 minutes, in 2022, it was 1 hour and 32 minutes, and in 2023, her speech lasted 1 hour and 27 minutes.
Regarding word count, Nirmala 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.
If she continues as Finance Minister until at least March 2028, she will hold the record for presenting the Budget 11 times. Currently, Morarji Desai holds the record with 10, followed by P. Chidambaram (9) and Pranab Mukherjee (8), along with Deshmukh and Nirmala Sitharaman (7 each).
Finance Ministers Dr. Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee and Arun Jaitley have each presented five consecutive Budgets.
This post was published on July 23, 2024 7:44 pm