Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to present the Interim Budget 2024 tomorrow at 11 am. The full budget for the financial year 2024-25 will be presented later this year after the new government is formed at Centre.
Sitharaman to equal Morarji Desai’s record
Tomorrow, Sitharaman will be presenting her sixth budget. With this, she will equal former Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s record of presenting six budgets in a row. She will become the only second Finance Minister to present six budgets back to back. During his tenure as the FM, Desai presented a total of five yearly budgets and one interim budget from 1959 to 1964.
She is also the first full-time female Finance Minister of India and has presented five full budgets since July 2019 and will present an interim or vote-on-account budget tomorrow. Tomorrow, she will surpass her predecessors, such as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five straight budgets.
Longest budget speech
Sithraman also holds the record for giving the longest budget speech in terms of duration in India. In 2020, her budget speech went on for two hours 42 minutes. Her speech began at 11 am and continued till 1:40 pm.