'Bare Minimum' Budget Copies Reach Parliament. No, Covid is Not the Only Reason

A truck loaded with copies of the budget arrived at Parliament around 9:30 am on Tuesday as Union finance minister prepared to present the Union Budget 2022. However, these are only a handful copies that have been printed in accordance with Centre’s go-green mission. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman too arrived carrying a ‘made-in-India’ tablet to present in budget in digital form.

She ditched the traditional budget briefcase in 2019 and replaced it with ‘bahi khata’, or the ledger book, that has a deep connection with the Indian business class and households. This year too, the budget documents will be available mostly digitally, with only a handful of physical copies, news agency PTI quoted officials as saying.

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 — the seat of the finance ministry — for at least a couple of weeks, the report stated.

This quarantine and the beginning of the printing would begin with a traditional ‘Halwa ceremony’ attended by finance minister, deputy finance ministers and senior officials in the ministry.

Since coming to power, the Modi government has curtailed printing of the budget copies — initially cutting copies distributed to journalists and outside analysts and then reducing those provided to Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs citing outbreak of the pandemic.

This year, the outbreak of the highly infectious Omicron variant has brought more curbs. As a result, the symbolic halwa ceremony was given a go-by.

The budget documents usually include the finance minister’s speech in Parliament, highlights, annual financial statement, finance bill containing tax proposals, memorandum explaining the provisions in financial bill, and macroeconomic framework statement.

They also include the medium-term fiscal policy cum fiscal policy strategy statement, outcome framework for schemes, customs notification, implementation of previous budget announcements, receipt budget, expenditure budget and statement of budget estimates. The documents are so bulky that a cotton bag used to be provided with each set to carry them.

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