New Delhi, Jan 27 (PTI) Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday participated in a traditional 'halwa' ceremony, marking the final stage for the preparation of the Union Budget 2026-27, to be unveiled on February 1 in the Lok Sabha.

The ceremony took place at the North Block on Raisina Hill, the old address of the Finance Ministry, as the new premises at the Kartyava Bhawan-I do not have a printing press.

The Finance Minister and most of her team were shifted from the iconic and majestic North Block to the modern central secretariat office housed in Kartavya Bhawan in September 2025.

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.

The ‘Halwa ceremony’ precedes the 'lock-in' of the officials involved in preparation of the Union Budget, an official statement said.

Maintaining the tradition, it was organised in the basement of North Block, which was attended by the finance minister and other high-ranking officials.

The Union Budget will be presented on February 1, 2026.

As part of the ceremony, the Union Finance Minister also took a tour of the Budget Press and reviewed the preparations, besides extending her best wishes to the entire budget team.

At the Halwa Ceremony, the Finance Minister was accompanied by Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and the Secretaries of all the Departments under the Ministry of Finance and other senior officers involved in the Budget preparation.

Sitharaman is going to present Budget 2026-27, the ninth straight budget in a row, in the backdrop of GDP growth expected to be at 7.6 per cent this financial year amid global geopolitical headwinds.

Like the previous five full Union Budgets and one interim, the full Union Budget 2026-27 will also be delivered in a paperless form.

All Union Budget documents, including the Annual Financial Statement (commonly known as the Budget), Demand for Grants (DG), Finance Bill, etc., will also be available on the 'Union Budget Mobile App' for hassle-free access to Budget documents by Members of Parliament (MPs) and the general public in a digitally accessible mode, it said.

The app is bilingual (English and Hindi) and will be available on both Android and iOS platforms, it said, adding that the Budget documents will be available on the Mobile App and the website after the completion of the Budget Speech by the Finance Minister in Parliament on February 1, 2026.

Halwa ceremony ----------------- It is a kind of ‘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 the 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 DP BAL BAL