Nirmala Sitharaman presents Union Budget 2023-24

Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2023-2024 in the Lok Sabha.

New Delhi, Feb 01: The Cabinet meeting headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the Union Budget 2023-24 on Wednesday. Following this, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Budget in the Lok Sabha.

While traditionally, copies of the Budget are brought to the Parliament complex before the Finance Minister arrives, this year, no document has been printed following the Covid-19 protocol. Additionally, the budget copies will be distributed electronically through the government website along with its special app developed for the same.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has reached the Parliament with the bahi khata .She posed for the traditional 'briefcase' picture outside her office along with her team of officials before heading to meet the President. She, however, was holding a tablet instead of a briefcase to present the Budget in a digital format.

Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman Finance Minister, had in July 2019 ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry Union Budget papers. She used the same in the following year, and in a pandemic-hit 2021, she swapped traditional papers with a digital tablet for carrying her speech as well as other Budget documents.

Her Budget for the fiscal year beginning April 2023 (FY2023-24) is the Modi government's 11th straight Budget since 2014 (including one interim Budget presented ahead of general elections in 2019).

She was appointed as the finance minister when Narendra Modi swept to power again in the 2019 election and presented her maiden Budget on July 5, 2019. She used a red-cloth folder enclosed with a string and emblazoned with the national emblem to carry Budget documents.

The Budget for 2023-24 is Sitharaman's fifth straight Budget.