As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman prepares to table the Union Budget 2026 on February 1, attention isn’t just on tax slabs, spending priorities, or policy signals. Once again, the spotlight turns to a quieter but fascinating tradition, the Budget speech itself. Over the decades, these speeches have mirrored India’s evolving economic journey, sometimes remembered as much for their length as for their content.
With this year’s presentation, Sitharaman will deliver her ninth consecutive Union Budget, extending her own record as the finance minister with the most back-to-back Budget speeches. In February 2025, she had already made history by becoming the first individual to present eight consecutive Budgets. Now, as expectations build, it’s worth revisiting the speeches that have stood out, both for how long they lasted and how brief they were.
Over time, Budget speeches have changed in tone, structure, and scale, adapting to shifting economic realities. Yet, a few have etched their place in history simply because they pushed the extremes of time and word count.
The distinction for the longest Budget speech in India’s parliamentary history belongs to Nirmala Sitharaman herself. While presenting the Union Budget in 2020, her address stretched to an unprecedented two hours and 42 minutes.
That marathon session wasn’t short on substance. The 2020 Budget introduced several headline-making measures, including a new income tax regime and the announcement of a proposed initial public offering of the Life Insurance Corporation of India. As the speech neared its conclusion, Sitharaman reportedly felt unwell, prompting Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to step in and read the final two pages on her behalf.
Interestingly, the 2020 address had already surpassed her previous record. In 2019, Sitharaman spoke for two hours and 17 minutes, itself considered unusually long. The contrast became even starker a few years later. Her interim Budget speech in 2024 wrapped up in just 56 minutes, making it her shortest address since taking charge as finance minister.
At the opposite end of the spectrum lies a speech that was remarkable for its brevity. The shortest Union Budget speech on record was delivered by Hirubhai M Patel during the 1977–78 financial year.
Serving as finance minister in the Morarji Desai-led government, Patel presented an interim Budget that ran to roughly 800 words. In terms of both duration and length, it remains the most concise Budget speech in India’s history, a sharp departure from the expansive addresses seen in later decades.
When measured not by time but by sheer volume of words, the record shifts to former Prime Minister and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. His landmark Budget speech in 1991, delivered at a critical moment for India’s economy, contained 18,650 words, making it the longest Budget address by word count to date.
Close behind is former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, whose 2018 Budget speech featured 18,604 words. Though marginally shorter, it stands as the second-longest Budget speech ever in terms of text.
