File photo of halwa ceremony
Budget 2025 halwa ceremony
: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended the customary ‘halwa’ ceremony on Friday, signalling the commencement of the final phase in preparing the Union Budget 2025-26, scheduled for presentation on February 1 in the Lok Sabha. The ceremony takes place in the North Block basement, where the ministry is situated in the national capital, with the finance minister and senior officials in attendance.
FM Sitharaman attended the event, inspected the Budget Press facilities, and conveyed her best wishes to the officials involved in the process.
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The ceremony was attended by Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, along with senior officials including Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth, and other high-ranking members of the ministry.The budget session of parliament will begin on January 31 and end on April 4, with an inter-session break from February 14. President Droupadi Murmu will address the joint sitting of two houses of Parliament on January 31.
What is Budget halwa ceremony?
The halwa ceremony is a customary ritual observed a few days before the budget presentation in the Parliament, involving the preparation and serving of “halwa” to officials and staff involved in the budget’s preparation.
Following the halwa ceremony, officials involved in drafting the Budget enter a ‘lock-in’ period, remaining confined within the North Block premises, cut off from external communication, and prohibited from using mobile phones to ensure that Budget details are not leaked before the official presentation in Parliament.
According to an ET report, Budget documents are sent for printing after receiving approval from the Prime Minister, and the Intelligence Bureau conducts surprise inspections of the printing press in the ministry’s basement to safeguard the process further.
This upcoming Budget Presentation will be Sitharaman’s eighth budget, surpassing the record set by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964 as finance minister. Like the previous few full Union Budgets, Budget 2025 will also be delivered in paperless form.
The Budget comes in the backdrop of weak GDP numbers and weak consumption in the economy. The Indian economy grew by 5.4 per cent in real terms in the July-September quarter of the current financial year 2024-25, lower than RBI’s forecast of 7 per cent. The Reserve Bank, in its latest monetary policy, had cut India’s growth forecast for 2024-25 to 6.6 per cent from 7.2 per cent.
The Economic Survey tabled in Parliament earlier this year “conservatively” projected India’s real GDP growth at 6.5-7 per cent for 2024-25, acknowledging that market expectations are higher. India’s GDP grew by an impressive 8.2 per cent during the financial year 2023-24 and continued to be the fastest-growing major economy, growing by 7.2 per cent in 2022-23 and 8.7 per cent in 2021-22.
