Manmohan Singh calls Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech ‘too long to absorb’

Tribune Web Desk
Chandigarh, February 1

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said that Finance Minister’s more than two-hour long presentation of Budget 2020 was “too long” for him to absorb it.

The Finance Minister went on for 160 minutes without a break—the longest budget speech in India’s post-independence period. The speech in fact had to be abruptly cut short only because Sitharaman felt unwell.

“It’s such a long budget, I was unable to absorb it,” was all that reporters got from Manmohan Singh.

Sitharaman had only two pages of her Budget speech unread when she appeared uneasy and was seen wiping sweat from her forehead.

She was offered candies by her ministerial colleagues, but that did not help and she opted to discontinue the speech asking Speaker Om Birla to consider the remaining part of her speech as read.

She broke her own record of a 2-hour-17-minute-long maiden Budget speech in July 2019. — With PTI