Budget 2024: Want To Know Which Is Nirmala Sitharaman's Shortest Budget Speech?

Interim Budget: With this Budget, Sitharaman has equaled the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai in presenting sixth-straight Budget

Sitharaman, who holds the distinction of delivering the longest budget speech at 2.40 hours in 2020, was cheered at regular intervals by the treasury benches. ( Image Source :PTI )

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday tabled her sixth consecutive Budget. With this Budget, the minister has equalled the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai in presenting sixth-straight Budget. Today, with a speech lasting 56 minutes, it is the shortest-ever Budget speech by Sitharaman. The finance minister started her Budget speech at 11 am.

Sitharaman, who holds the distinction of delivering the longest budget speech at 2.40 hours in 2020, was cheered at regular intervals by the treasury benches. Her remarks on the presentation of the full Budget by "our government" in July receiving the loudest applause.

Opposition members listened to Sitharaman's Budget speech with rapt attention, barring some voices of disapproval to the minister's reference to her government returning to power after the Lok Sabha elections. 

In 2019, as India's first full-time woman finance minister, Sitharaman's Budget speech had lasted for two hours and 17 minutes. In 2021, her speech lasted for one hour and 50 minutes, followed by 92 minutes in 2022, and 87 minutes in 2023. Unlike previous occasions, her Budget speech found no mention of Tamil poets and thinkers. But she referred to Prime Minister Modi at least eight times and quoted from his speeches.

The public galleries saw thin attendance with a few Rajya Sabha members occupying seats in Gallery 2, while relatives of Finance Minister Sitharaman, Krishnamurthy Lakshminarayan and Vidya Lakshminarayan, and her daughter Vangmayi Parakala were seated in the first row of Gallery 3.

Sitharaman, who was dressed in a turquoise-coloured embroidered Kantha silk saree, Ministers of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and Bhagwat Karad, and top officers from the Finance Ministry called on President Droupadi Murmu before presenting the Budget.

The President gave Sitharaman a spoonful of curd and sugar and extended her best wishes for the presentation of the Union Budget. During her speech, she coined new expansion of FDI – First, Develop India and for GDP – Governance, Development and Performance.

"Besides delivering on high growth in terms of Gross Domestic Product, the government is equally focused on a more comprehensive 'GDP', i.e., 'Governance, Development and Performance'," Sitharaman said.

In 2019, Finance Minister Sitharaman did away with the traditional Budget briefcase and instead went for a 'bahi-khata' with the national emblem to carry the speech and other documents on a tablet computer, a tradition she stuck to on Thursday.