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India’s first ever budget was presented by a Scottish economist James Wilson on April 7, 1860. He was from the East India Company and introduced income tax and other significant revenue sources. (Image Credit: X)
First budget of independent India was presented by Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947.
Morarji Desai holds the record for presenting the most numbers of the Union Budget . He was charged with presenting the Budget 10 times under both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s regimes.
Current Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman holds a unique record for delivering the longest budget speech for the Union Budget 2020-21. She spoke for 2 hrs and 42 mins, which is the longest.
Shortest Interim Budget speech was given by Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel in 1977. His speech consisted of only 800 words. (Image: X)
Manmohan Singh’s budget speech of 1991 is the longest in terms of word count, His speech had 18,604 words.
Earlier, the budget was presented on the last day of February at 5pm until 1999 when Yashwant Sinha the then Finance Minister presented the budget at 11am. Since then it has been maintained.
Until 1955, the budget was presented only in English when the then government decided to change it and to also print it in Hindi.
During the Covide-19 pandemic the budget was presented in a unique way, it was presented completely digitally during 2021-22 section.