To maintain secrecy, there is a “lock-in” of officials involved in making the budget. (File)
New Delhi:
The customary ‘Halwa ceremony’ to mark the beginning of the compilation and printing of documents related to the Union’s budget for 2023-2024 took place in the budget press of the Ministry of Finance in Noordblok on Thursday.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Union Finance Minister Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad and Pankaj Chaudhary were present along with other senior officials from the Ministry of Finance.
The ceremony marks the final stage of the preparation of the Union’s budget. The finance minister begins the ceremony by stirring the halwa in the kadhai and then serves it to colleagues at the ministry’s headquarters in the national capital.
To keep the budget secret, there is a “lock-in” of officials involved in making the budget. These officers and staff will only come from the Northern Bloc after the budget has been presented in parliament.
Last year, for the first time, the usual ceremony did not take place due to people’s health and safety concerns over Covid fears.
Like the previous two Union budgets, the Union budget 2023-2024 will also be submitted paperless. The Union budget 2023-2024 will be presented on 1 February 2023.
The budget documents will be available on the “Union Budget Mobile App” on both the Android and Apple OS platforms upon completion of the budget speech by the Finance Minister in Parliament on February 1, 2023.
The formal exercise to prepare the annual budget for the next fiscal year (2023-24) began on October 10.
Budget 2023 is likely to be the last complete budget of the Modi government in its second term with the next Lok Sabha elections in April-May 2024.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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