1. India's first-ever budget was presented by Scottish economist James Wilson on April 7, 1860.
2. Post-independence, R K Shanmukham Chetty, the then finance minister presented the country's first annual Budget on February 28, 1948.
3. Until 1999, India's budget was presented at 5pm on the last working day of February. This was changed by Yashwant Sinha, who was the finance minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government at that time to 11 am.
4. Dr Manmohan Singh holds the record for the longest budget speech, in terms of words, using 18,604 words in 1991. In 2018, Arun Jaitley’s speech had 18,604 words, second place in terms of word count.
5. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for the longest budget speech. She spoke for two hours and 42 minutes during the Union Budget for 2020-21.
6. With the presentation of this budget on July 23, Nirmala Sitharaman will also become the first finance minister to present seven consecutive budgets, breaking former finance minister Morarji Desai’s record of six.
7. In India's history, Moraraji Desai still holds the record for submitting the most budget proposals. He presented 10 budgets during his tenure as finance minister from 1962 to 1969.
8. The shortest budget speech was presented by Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel in 1977, with just 800 words.
9. The Union Budget was presented only in English until 1955. The Congress government later decided to print the Budget documents in both Hindi and English.
10. The 2021-22 budget was the first entirely digitised budget owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.