Key facts about India's Union Budgets till date
East India Company
Budget was first introduced in India on April 7,1860 by James Wilson from East India Company to the British Crown.
(Image courtesy: The Scottish Royal Academy)
Independent India’s first Budget
1947-48: Independent India’s first Budget was presented by finance minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.
Nearly half of this (46 per cent) or Rs 92.74 crore was allocated for defence services department.
Presenting budget most number of times
In a first, the Budget was presented by the Deputy Prime Minister Morarji Desai who was also the finance minister.
Morarji Desai presented the Budget a record 10 times.
First woman to present Budget
The 1970-71 Budget was unique as it remains India’s only Budget to be presented by a woman.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was also the finance minister during that period presented the Budget.
Longest budget in terms of words
In terms of words, Manmohan Singh's watershed 1991 Union Budget was the longest. It contained 18,650 words.
While, in terms of paragraphs, Arun Jaitley's 2014 Union Budget, the first of the Modi government, was the longest. It had 253 paragraphs that Jaitley took 2 hours 10 minutes to read excluding a 4-minute break.
Presentation time altered
Till 2000, the Budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of February.
It was only in 2001 that finance minister Yashwant Sinha changed the practice and the budget began to be introduced at 11 am.
Longest budget speech
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget 2020 speech is the longest in terms of duration in independent India's history.
Her speech lasted two hours and 17 minutes. There were total 13,128 words in her speech.
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