Halwa Ceremony: Next week, all attention will be on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as she presents her eighth consecutive Union Budget in Parliament. However, this week, another event is drawing heightened attention: the Halwa ceremony.
The event will take place on Friday evening at the North Block in Delhi, marking the final phase of Union Budget preparations.
The Halwa ceremony is attended by all the important officials and secretaries involved in the preparation of the budget. As part of the ceremony, the finance minister takes a round of the Budget Press and reviews the preparations ahead of printing.
Post the event, the lockdown process starts off, wherein the people involved in the making of the budget are restricted from leaving the ministry premises, until the budget is finally presented in Parliament. The officials remain in a ‘lockdown’ like situation and are cut off from the outside world with an aim to maintain the secrecy around the final budget document before presentation.
What is Halwa Ceremony?
The Halwa ceremony is a common ritual that takes place before every budget. In India, starting an important event with a sweet dish is a practice well-established in the roots of the country.
The budget session will begin on January 31 and will end on April 4. The economic survey will also be announced before February 1, when the budget is announced in the parliament.
President Droupadi Murmu will also deliver an address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament, a day before the budget. Following this, Parliament will have an intersession break between sessions starting February 14. The sitting will resume on March 10.
Sitharaman has already become the first female finance minister to present the highest number of budgets. And just like the previous few Union Budgets, the upcoming one will also be paperless.
