Halwa Ceremony ahead Budget 2021: The traditional pudding program to be held before the budget will be held today, January 23. Only after the Halwa program starts, the process of printing of documents for the Union Budget starts. The event to be held in North Block will be hosted by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and in this event besides Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur, Secretary of Ministry of Finance and other officials of the Ministry will also be present.
Every year the Halwa Ceremony is held a few days before the budget is presented. This program is an indication of the beginning of the process regarding the budget. This time the budget will be presented on 1 February.
Budget and Economic Survey will not print due to Corona
The Corona epidemic has had an impact on the budget this year. The budget will not be printed due to the Corona transition. Apart from this, the economic survey will also not be printed. For the first time after independence, physical copies of the country’s budget will not be given to MPs. In place of this, a soft copy of the budget and the economic survey will be shared. The economic survey will be presented in the House on 29 January. On Tuesday, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla informed that the first part of the budget session will run from 29 January to 15 February and the second part will run from 8 March to 8 April. The Rajya Sabha will run from 9 am to 2 pm and the Lok Sabha from 4 pm to 9 pm. All MPs have been requested to undergo an RT-PCR test before the budget session.
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Workers are not allowed to exit till budget
After the introduction of Halwa Ceremony, all those personnel who are part of the budget making process, have to stay in the basement of North Block. All these people have to stay there until the Finance Minister presents the budget in the House. This is done so that nothing related to it becomes public before the annual budget is presented. About 100 employees of the Finance Ministry remain in the basement till the budget is printed, sealed and presented on the budget day.
