After months of preparations, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the last full year's Budget of the Modi government 2.0 on February 1. The annual Budget is prepared by the finance ministry in consultation with various other ministries and think tank NITI Aayog. It is one of the highly anticipated events of the year and is closely watched by economists, businesses, and the common man. There are several trivia and fun facts about the Budget since it was first presented. We have tried to bring some of those fun facts ahead of the Union Budget 2023.


When was the first Budget announced?


Did you know when was the first-ever Budget India's first Budget announced in pre-independent India? It was on April 7, 1860, when Scottish economist and politician James Wilson, of the East India Company, presented the budget to the British Crown. Post-Independence, India's first Budget was presented on November 26, 1947, by then Finance Minister R K Shanmukham Chetty.


Where was the Budget derived from?


Interestingly, the word 'Budget' has been derived from the French word 'bougette' meaning 'small bag'. It means a small leather bag that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer used to carry the Budget papers.


Longest Budget speech


Four-time presenter Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for delivering the longest speech as she spoke for almost two hours and 42 minutes in the 2020-21 Union Budget on February 1, 2020. In fact, she had to cut short her speech with two pages still remaining.


In fact, Sitharaman broke her own record for her maiden Budget delivered in July 2019 when she had spoken for two hours and 17 minutes.


Most wordy Budget speech


Although former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is known as a man of few words, as a Finance Minister delivered a speech with the most words - 18,650 - in 1991. The Modi government's Finance Minister for their first term, Arun Jaitley, comes in second, with a speech 18,604 words long. Jaitley spoke for an hour and 49 minutes.


Shortest Budget speech


Now, coming to the shortest budget, Finance Minister Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel 1977 delivered the shortest speech of just 800 words.


Who presented the most Budgets?


Former Prime Minister Moraraji Desai has presented the maximum Budgets of all time. He presented 10 budgets during his stint as Finance Minister during 1962-69, followed by P Chidambaram (nine), and Pranab Mukherjee (eight). The least number of Budget presented so far include Congress' Manmohan Singh, with four, a number that Sitharaman will overtake this February.


Budget timings altered 


The Union Budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of February until 1999 in line with the British era traditions. However, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed the timings of the Budget presentation and pushed it to 11 am. Later in 2017, Arun Jaitley started presenting the Union Budget on February 1, shifting away from the colonial-era tradition of using the last working day.


Becoming paperless


The Union Budget was presented in English till 1955. It is only later that the Congress-led government decided to print the Budget papers in both Hindi and English. The Budget has seen several changes with the 2021-22 edition going paperless owing to the pandemic.


Women finance ministers to present Budget


Sitharaman became the second woman to have presented the Budget after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Gandhi presented the Budget for the fiscal year 1970-71, while Sitharaman delivered her first Budget in 2019. In that speech, Sitharaman did away with the traditional Budget briefcase and rather opted for a traditional 'bahi-khata' with the National Emblem to carry the speech and other documents.


Merging of Railways and Union Budget


Till 2017, the Budget for the Railways and Union Budget were presented separately. After being presented separately for 92 years, the Railway Budget was merged with the Union Budget in 2017 and presented together.