Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the interim budget for 2024-25 on Thursday for 58 minutes, her shortest speech so far. As India heads to the Lok Sabha elections in three months, the FM made no major announcements, including no change in income tax rates. The speech focused on Viksit Bharat 2047.

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At the last budget, the finance minister spoke for 87 minutes, her shortest speech ever. Her record is for delivering the longest budget speech in 2020 at 2 hours and 40 minutes. She spoke extensively about employment, healthcare and infrastructure development.

In 2019, Sitharaman’s budget speech lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes. This was the year that a full-time female finance minister presented a union budget for the first time. The chief announcement included 10-point vision for the decade, benefits for MSMEs and start-ups and opening of pre-application for income tax returns.

Her 2021 and 2022 budget speeches lasted 1 hour, 40 minutes and 31 minutes.

Budget speeches by other finance ministers

Former finance minister Jaswant Singh spoke for 2 hours and 13 minutes in his 2003 budget speech, while former finance minister Arun Jaitley delivered 2 hours and 10 minutes in 2014 minute.

In terms of word count, Manmohan Singh delivered the longest budget speech in 1991. The speech has 18,650 words. Arun Jaitley’s 2018 Budget speech had 18,604 words. He was the second word in the speech.

The shortest budget was presented in 1977 by the then Finance Minister Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel. The speech consists of 800 words.

Morarji Desai holds the record for the largest budget. As Finance Minister from 1962-69, he presented 10 federal budgets.

Desai is followed by P Chidambaram with nine budgets, Pranab Mukherjee and Yashwant Sinha with eight budgets and Manmohan Singh with six budgets.