Budget 2024: Nirmala Sitharaman Gives Her Shortest Speech at 58 Minutes; No Change in Income Tax Slab
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the mid-term budget for 2024-25 on Thursday for 58 minutes, which is her shortest speech till date. Since Lok Sabha elections are to be held in India in three months, FMA has not made any major announcement including any change in income tax rates. The speech focused on developed India for 2047.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the mid-term budget for 2024-25 on Thursday for 58 minutes, which is her shortest speech till date. Since Lok Sabha elections are to be held in India in three months, FMA has not made any major announcement including any change in income tax rates. The speech focused on developed India for 2047.
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In the last budget, the Finance Minister gave a speech for 87 minutes, which was his shortest speech till date. She holds the record for giving the longest budget speech of 2 hours and 40 minutes in 2020. He spoke extensively on employment, healthcare and infrastructure development.
In 2019, Sitharaman's budget speech lasted for 2 hours 20 minutes. That year, for the first time, a full-time woman Finance Minister presented the Union Budget. Key announcements include a 10-point vision for the decade, benefits for MSMEs and start-ups and introduction of pre-filing of income tax returns, etc.
His budget speeches in 2021 and 2022 lasted for 1 hour 40 minutes and 1 hour 31 minutes.
Budget speeches of other finance ministers
Former Finance Minister Jaswant Singh spoke for 2 hours and 13 minutes in his 2003 budget speech while former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley spoke for 2 hours and 10 minutes in 2014.
In terms of word count, the longest budget speech was given by Manmohan Singh in 1991. The speech contained 18,650 words. Arun Jaitley's 2018 budget speech contained 18,604 words. He has the second highest number of words in his speech. The shortest budget in terms of words was presented by the then Finance Minister Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel in 1977. The speech contained 800 words.
The record of presenting the highest budget is in the name of Morarji Desai. During his tenure as Finance Minister in 1962–69, he presented 10 Union Budgets.
Desai is followed by P Chidambaram with 9 budgets, Pranab Mukherjee and Yashwant Sinha with 8 budgets and Manmohan Singh with 6 budgets.