Image Source : PTI Sitharaman will present her eighth consecutive Budget.
Budget 2025: Budget documents reached Parliament ahead of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget presentation at 11 am today.
Sitharaman will present her eighth consecutive Budget, which she will deliver from a digital tablet enclosed in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ style pouch.
Sitharaman, India’s first full-time woman Finance Minister, broke away from the colonial tradition of carrying a Budget briefcase in July 2019, opting instead for a traditional ‘bahi-khata’, to carry the Union Budget papers.
She continued this custom the following year, and in the pandemic-affected 2021, she replaced the traditional papers with a digital tablet to carry her speech and other Budget documents.
This tradition continues on Saturday.
Draped in an off-white handloom silk saree with fish-themed embroidery and golden border, Sitharaman posed for the traditional ‘briefcase’ photo outside her North Block office, accompanied by her team of officials, before heading to meet the President.
With the tablet securely placed inside a red cover featuring a golden national emblem, her next stop will be Parliament, after her meeting with President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Her Budget for the fiscal year starting April 2025 (FY2025-26) marks the 14th consecutive Budget under the Narendra Modi government since 2014, including two interim Budgets presented ahead of the general elections in 2019 and 2024.
She was appointed as the finance minister when Modi swept to power again in the 2019 election and presented her maiden Budget on July 5, 2019.She used a red cloth folder enclosed with a string and emblazoned with the national emblem to carry the Budget documents.
Earlier, finance ministers in different governments, including her predecessors in the Modi government – Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal- used the standard Budget briefcase.
With PTI inputs
