Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday, 1 February, delivered the Budget 2022-23 with her shortest budget speech so far.
She spoke for one hour and 30 minutes, making it the shortest among the budget speeches that generally go for about 2 hours at least.
Sitharaman, who also made the second paperless budget presentation as she read the speech from a tab, also quoted a verse from Mahabharat's Shanti Parva.
In 2019, she had made the longest speech at two hours and 15 minutes (135 minutes), only to top that the next year, in 2020, to speak for over 160 minutes.
Prior to her, Jaswant Singh had spoken for 2 hours 15 minutes in 2003.
When it comes to word limit, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went on to create a record in his landmark 1991 speech – when he was Finance Minister in the PV Narasima Rao government – at 18,650 words. Arun Jaitley's 2018 budget speech was a bit short at 18,604 words, which took one hour and 49 minutes to deliver. He however, spoke at length almost every time with word lengths beyond 16,000.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)