Budget 2024: The longest and shortest speeches in Indian history

Prior to the presentation of the Union Budget 2024 in Parliament on 1 February, here is a look at the longest and shortest Budget speeches made in Indian history

The first Budget of independent India was presented in November 1947 by then Finance Minister Shanmukham Chetty.

In 2020, Nirmala Sitharaman delivered the longest Budget speech to date, lasting two hours and 40 minutes. The speech's main highlights were new income tax slabs and the LIC IPO.

In 2019, India's first full-time female finance minister delivered her first Budget presentation. The speech lasted two hours and 17 minutes.

Jaswant Singh's 2003 Budget speech was two hours and 13 minutes long. Singh proposed universal health insurance, e-filing of income tax returns, and excise and customs duty reductions on specific items during his speech.

In 2014, Budget speech delivered by former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley lasted two hours and ten minutes. The government increased the tax exemption slab from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh, increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence to 49 percent, and announced the establishment of more AIIMS this year.

In 1977, former Finance Minister Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel presented the country's smallest Budget. This was the interim Budget. The Budget speech that year was 800 words long.

In 1991, then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh delivered the longest Budget speech in terms of words. His speech consisted of 18,650 words, which he delivered in one hour and 49 minutes.

In 2018, the Budget speech delivered by former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had a total of 18,604 words, just few words behind Manmohan Singh longest speech by word count.

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