New Delhi, Jan 24 (PTI) Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday participated in a traditional ‘halwa’ ceremony, marking the final stage for the preparation of Union Budget 2025-26 to be unveiled on February 1 in the Lok Sabha.

The ceremony is a customary ritual in which traditional dessert ‘halwa’ is prepared and served to officials and staff members of the finance ministry who are involved in the preparation of the budget.

It is organised in the basement of North Block, which houses the ministry in the national capital and is attended by the finance minister and other high-ranking officials.

According to sources, the Finance Minister participated in the ceremony and also took a round of the Budget Press and reviewed the preparations besides extending her best wishes to the officials concerned.

Sitharaman is going to present Budget 2025-26, the eighth straight budget in a row, on the backdrop of GDP growth moderating to 6.4 per cent in the financial year as against 8.2 per cent recorded in the previous fiscal.

Like the previous four full Union Budgets and one Interim, the full Union Budget 2025-26 will also be delivered in paperless form.

All the Union Budget documents, including the Annual Financial Statement (commonly known as Budget), Demand for Grants (DG), Finance Bill etc. as prescribed by the Constitution, will be available on the 'Union Budget Mobile App' for hassle-free access to Budget.

Besides Sitharaman, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and other senior officials, including Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth and other senior officials were present at the ceremony.

Halwa ceremony: It is a kind of a ‘send-off’ for finance ministry officials and staff involved in the preparation of the Union government’s annual financial statement. They enter what is called a ‘lock-in’ period, during which they stay in the basement of North Block, cut off from the world outside with a view to maintaining the secrecy around the final budget document.

They will emerge only after the finance minister completes her Budget speech in the Lok Sabha. It is considered a gesture of appreciation for those who have worked on the Budget. The basement of North Block houses a printing press that was traditionally used to print budget documents for 40 years from 1980 to 2020.

Thereafter, the budget went digital with bare minimum documents printed and the bulk distribution happening via mobile app or on the website. Going digital also meant that the lock-in period has become shorter to just five days from the previous one which lasted up to two weeks.

Printing Press: All Budget-related documents are printed at North Block itself using a dedicated government press. Earlier, the documents were printed at Rashtrapati Bhavan, but this was shifted to a press on Minto Road in the national capital in 1950 after documents were leaked, and in 1980 to North Block. The printing of several hundred copies of the voluminous budget documents was such an elaborate exercise that printing staff had to be quarantined inside the printing press in the basement of North Block for up to two weeks.

Tradition: While the Narendra Modi government has done away with several traditional aspects of the Budget since coming to power in 2014, such as merging the Rail Budget with the main Budget from 2017, bringing forward the date of presentation to February 1 instead of the last date of that month, and moving to a digital format in 2021— the ‘halwa’ ceremony as a tradition has survived. PTI DP CS DP BAL BAL

Budget secrecy reinforced by lock-in protocol and paperless distribution of constitutionally prescribed budget documents digitally. The halwa ceremony coincides with a supervised lock-in period in the North Block basement to maintain confidentiality of the final Annual Financial Statement and related constitutional documents until the Budget speech. The government has moved to a paperless distribution model: constitutionally prescribed budget documents, including the Annual Financial Statement, Demand for Grants and Finance Bill, are issued digitally through an authorised mobile application, a change that has shortened the operational lock-in and altered traditional printing logistics.