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Record breaking debut by Jaitley, gives longest speech!

The 2 hours five minutes budget speech has broken many records in recent times by being the longest and having 44 pages.

Ritu Raj and Pankaj Sharma/Zee Research Group/Delhi
Clad in white Kurta Pajama and yellow jacket, Arun Jaitley’s debut budget was full of fumbles and breaks. Considered one of the best political orators, Jaitley had to struggle with some words while reading the Union Budget. The 2 hours five minutes budget speech has broken many records in recent times by being the longest and having 44 pages. The budget speech of Pranab Mukherjee for 2012-13 had been the longest till date with 36 pages. The 2011-12 budget speech had 31 pages. Furthermore, while P. Chidambaram’s budget speech (2013-14) had 30 pages, his interim budget (2014-15) had 14 pages. Finance Minister Jaitley was applauded 119 times by the House, but had to deal with disruption 13 times. Due to bad health, he could only read out the first part of the speech standing and Lok Sabha proceedings had to be stopped for six minutes. While reading out the budget speech, he stopped for 10 times for drinking water. He used Hindi words 15 times in his speech. Contrary to the past and supporting Modi’s agenda, Jaitley, used the word “development” 55 times and “infrastructure” 33 times. In last four years, both words were used by Pranab Mukherjee the maximum times. During 2011-12, Mukherjee used development 40 times and infrastructure 28 times. Similarly, words like growth (31), fiscal deficit (6), farmer (15), monsoon (2) and jobs (4) were frequently used by Jaitley during his speech. The budget had also given a life to some leaders of the yesteryears. In his speech, Jaitley named Jai Prakash Narayan, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Madan Mohan Malviya, Shyama Prasad Mukherji, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Mahatma Gandhi once each. Narendra Modi’s name was used four times during the speech, while Atal Bihari Vajpayee was mentioned twice.