Budget 2023: Nirmala Sitharaman delivers shortest-ever speech; here's how long the FM took

By Team Newsable | First Published Feb 1, 2023, 2:31 PM IST

Budget 2023: In 2020, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman set a new record for the longest budget speech in Indian history, lasting for 2 hours and 40 minutes. She was forced to cut it short and take a break as she appeared exhausted after talking continuously.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered her fifth consecutive budget speech in Parliament on Wednesday and wrapped it up in under 90 minutes, her shortest so far. Last year, she gave her shortest speech at 92 minutes; the year before, in 2021, she spoke for 1 hour and 50 minutes.

In 2020, she set a new record for the longest budget speech in Indian history, lasting for 2 hours and 40 minutes. She was forced to cut it short and take a break as she appeared exhausted after talking continuously for so long. During her Budget 2020 speech, Sitharaman was also seen sipping electrolytes.

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So far, she has presented four budgets. FM Sitharaman joins Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, and P Chidambaram as the sixth minister in independent India to present consecutive budgets. This is Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's fifth consecutive budget.

Congress MP, Karti Chidambaram, took a dig at the finance minister and tweeted, "Hope it's short! @nsitharaman."

Hope it’s short!

— Karti P Chidambaram (@KartiPC)

The longest speech, however, differed from the Budget speech, which had the most words. Following records, Manmohan Singh delivered the longest Budget speech in terms of words under the Narasimha Rao government in 1991, at 18,650 words. The speech of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in 2018 was 18,604 words long. Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel, then finance minister, set the record for the shortest Budget speech in 1977. It was 800 words long.

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