Budget 2020: FM Nirmala Sitharaman halts speech, yet breaks own record for longest

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday delivered the longest budget speech ever, breaking her own record that she held for her first budget speech of 2019 despite cutting short the delivery after feeling unwell.

Sitharaman cut short her Budget speech because she felt unwell after speaking for a record 162 minutes — 2 hours and 42 minutes — in Lok Sabha. She had only two pages of her Budget speech unread when she appeared uneasy and was seen wiping sweat from her forehead.

The FM was offered candies by her ministerial colleagues, but that did not help and she opted to discontinue the speech asking Speaker Om Birla to consider the remaining part of her speech as read.

In 2019, she had taken 2 hours and 15 minutes to present her first budget.

The third longest speech was delivered by Jaswant Singh in 2003, which had taken 2 hours and 13 minutes.

In 2014, former finance minister Jaitley had taken 2 hours and 10 minutes to present the budget which was a 253-paragraph long document.

Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who passed away in August last year, was known for his long budget speeches.

Jaitley had the second-longest budget speeches on an average, in terms of the number of paragraphs. On average, his speeches consisted of 185 paras. His second budget speech in 2015 took more than two hours.

Former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who later became India's President, had an average of 202 paragraphs in his speeches. P. Chidambaram comes third in the list with an average of 173 paragraphs.

Among the top ten finance ministers with long budget speeches are Yashwant Sinha (170 paragraphs), Manmohan Singh (133), R.Venkataraman (132), Haribhai M. Patel (117), Yashwantrao B. Chavan (88), T.T.Krishnamachari (78) and Morarji R. Desai (77).

The first budget speech of independent India, presented by R. K. Shanmukham Chetty, was the shortest with 39 paragraphs.

Sitharaman, in the Union Budget 2020, made a number of key announcements. Among the key announcements are new tax slabs, proposal to raise banks' deposit insurance, LIC IPO launch and others. The government vowed to boost the income of Indians and their purchasing power, in a bid to revive domestic economic growth that has slumped.