Budget 2024: Interesting facts about the Budget presentation
Nirmala Sitharaman
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the interim Budget for fiscal year 2024-25 on February 1, 2024. It would be her seventh consecutive budget since 2019.
First Budget
India contains a 163-year-old legacy of presentation budget in the country. The first budget was introduced in the country by James Wilson, a Scottish economist, on April 7, 1860, under the East India Company rule.
Longest and Shortest Budget speech
Nirmala Sitharaman 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 forty-two minutes. The shortest budget of India was presented by Hirubhai Mullijibhai Patel in 1977, in which he spoke just 800 words.
Most words in Budget Speech
In 1991, Manmohan Singh-under Narasimha Rao government-gave the longest budget speech in terms of words, clocking in at 18,650 words.
Most Number of Budget presentations
Former PM Moraraji Desai holds the record for submitting the most number of Budget proposals till now. During his tenure as finance minister from 1962 to 1969, Desai presented 10 Budgets.
Budget presentation by Prime Minister
Generally, the Finance Minister is tasked with presenting the Union Budget every year, but there have been instances when the Budget was presented by the Prime Minister of the country. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister to present a union Budget.
Budget Timing
In 1999, then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha altered the timing of the Budget presentation to 11 am, contrary to the colonial-era practices of presenting it at 5 pm on the last working day of February.
Railway Budget
In 2017, then finance minister Arun Jaitley ended the 92-year-old tradition of having a separate Railway Budget, after the Union Cabinet decided to merge the Railway Budget with the General Budget in 2016.
Paperless Budget
In 2023, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the first-ever paperless Budget in the country, as she read her speech from tablet. In 2019, she ditched the colonial tradition of carrying the Budget in a briefcase.