12 years, 12 speeches: PM Modi breaks Indira Gandhi’s Independence Day record

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday set a new milestone by delivering his 12th consecutive Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort, surpassing former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s record of 11 straight speeches. Modi now stands second only to Jawaharlal Nehru, who holds the record with 17 consecutive addresses.

Indira Gandhi, who served as prime minister between January 1966 and March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, delivered a total of 16 Independence Day speeches, 11 of them back-to-back.

Nehru, India’s first and longest-serving prime minister from 1947 to 1964, addressed the nation 17 times in a row from the Red Fort. Lal Bahadur Shastri spoke on Independence Day twice, in 1964 and 1965, followed by Morarji Desai, who delivered two addresses after the Emergency. Chaudhary Charan Singh spoke only once in 1979.

After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi addressed the nation five times from the Red Fort. VP Singh delivered the speech once in 1990, while PV Narasimha Rao did so for four consecutive years from 1991 to 1995. HD Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral each addressed the nation once, in 1996 and 1997, respectively.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, prime minister from 1998 to 2004, delivered six Independence Day addresses, while Manmohan Singh held the record for the longest streak in the post-Emergency era, speaking for 10 consecutive years from 2004 to 2014—until Modi surpassed it last year with his 11th consecutive speech.

He also delivered the longest ever I-day speech last year by any prime minister with a record 98-minute address.

Modi's speeches on August 15 invariably touch on key issues of the day and the country's growth on his watch, and he often intersperses this with announcements of policy initiatives or new schemes.

In his address on August 15 in 2024, he had made an unequivocal pitch for a "secular" civil code instead of the current framework, which is "communal" and promotes "discrimination", and also for simultaneous polls. PTI