Halwa Ceremony: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is going to present the full budget on July 23. Earlier today, Halwa Ceremony was organized in North Block on Tuesday. As the final step in the process of preparing the budget for the Union Budget 2024, today the Halwa Ceremony has been organized in the presence of Nirmala Sitharaman in North Block. There is a tradition of organizing Halwa Ceremony before the budget every year.
Employees stay in the basement for 10 days
Halwa Ceremony is celebrated after the documentation of the budget. This ceremony is celebrated in the Budget Press. The Budget Press is in the basement below in North Block. Halwa is made in a big pan and everyone eats halwa. The Finance Minister and all the officials of the Finance Ministry participate in this ceremony. After the Halwa Ceremony, the printing of the budget starts. After the halwa is made, more than 100 employees and officers who print the budget stay there. These people stay in the basement of North Block for 10 days. These people come out only after the budget speech of the Finance Minister. This rule is there so that no information related to the budget is leaked.
Why is halwa made?
The halwa ceremony takes place after the preparation of the budget is completed and before the budget speech of the Finance Minister. When the hard work of many days of the people engaged in making the budget pays off, there is an atmosphere of excitement. In Indian tradition, there is a tradition of eating and feeding sweets when any good work is done. The mouth of the officials engaged in making the budget is sweetened by feeding halwa. In the year 2022, the halwa ceremony was not celebrated in view of the corona epidemic protocol. That year the budget was not documented. Rather it was presented digitally. At that time sweets were distributed instead of the halwa ceremony.
