Budget 2025 halwa ceremony: The Halwa ceremony, marking the final stage of the Union Budget 2025-26 preparation process, will be held on Friday, 24 January 2025 at 5 PM in North Block, in the presence of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
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 seventh 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.
