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Budget 2023: Who delivered the longest Budget speech in India?
Last year, in Budget 2022, Nirmala Sitharaman spoke for a total of one and a half hours only.
In 2020, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman broke her own record of making the longest-ever budget address. Sitharaman spoke for two hours and 42 minutes while presenting the budget 2020-21. The minister had two pages to go when she had to cut short her speech due to health concerns.
In 2019, Sitharaman had presented her maiden budget for 2019-2020. She spoke for two hours and 17 minutes.
Last year, in Budget 2022, Sitharaman spoke for a total of one and a half hours only. It was her shortest-ever budget address. She has presented four budgets so far. On Wednesday, Sitharaman will present her fifth Union budget.
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram apparently took a dig at the finance minister.
“@KartiPC Hope it’s short! @nsitharaman,” he tweeted.
However, the longest speech was not the Budget speech that had the maximum words. Records show that at 18,650 words, Manmohan Singh delivered the longest Budget speech in terms of words in 1991 under the Narasimha Rao government. In 2018, finance minister Arun Jaitley's speech had 18,604 words. he record of the shortest Budget speech was set in 1977 by then finance minister Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel. It had 800 words.
