Union Budget 2026-27: Nirmala Sitharaman attends traditional halwa ceremony ahead of February 1 presentation

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday participated in the customary ‘halwa ceremony’, marking the final stage of preparations for the Union Budget 2026-27, which will be presented in the Lok Sabha on February 1.

The ceremony was held in the basement of the North Block on Raisina Hill, the historic seat of the Finance Ministry.

The halwa ceremony is a long-standing ritual during which the traditional Indian dessert is prepared and served to officials and staff involved in the preparation of the Budget. It symbolises the beginning of the ‘lock-in’ period, when key officials remain sequestered to maintain secrecy around the final Budget documents.

An official statement said the ceremony precedes the lock-in of officials who will remain cut off from the outside world until the Finance Minister completes her Budget speech in Parliament.

Sitharaman attended the event along with Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, secretaries of all departments under the Ministry of Finance, and other senior officers involved in the Budget-making exercise.

As part of the event, the Finance Minister also toured the Budget Press at North Block, reviewed preparedness, and extended her best wishes to the entire Budget team.

The Finance Ministry shifted from the iconic North Block to Kartavya Bhawan in September 2025. However, the halwa ceremony continues to be organised at North Block, which has historically housed the dedicated government printing press used for Budget documents.

Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2026-27, her ninth consecutive Budget, against the backdrop of India’s economy expected to grow at 7.6 per cent in the current financial year, despite global geopolitical and economic headwinds.

Like the previous five full Union Budgets and one interim Budget, the 2026-27 Budget will be presented in a completely paperless format. All Budget documents, including the Annual Financial Statement, Demand for Grants and the Finance Bill, will be made available on the Union Budget Mobile App for Members of Parliament and the general public.

The app, available on both Android and iOS platforms, is bilingual in English and Hindi. The documents will be accessible on the mobile application and the official Budget website immediately after the completion of the Finance Minister’s speech in Parliament on February 1, the statement said.

What is the halwa ceremony?

The halwa ceremony serves as a symbolic send-off for Finance Ministry officials and staff involved in preparing the Union government’s annual financial statement. Following the ceremony, they enter the lock-in period, staying in the basement of North Block to ensure confidentiality of the Budget.

Officials are allowed to emerge only after the Finance Minister finishes delivering the Budget speech in the Lok Sabha. The ritual is also seen as a gesture of appreciation for the extensive work put in by officials during the Budget preparation process.

The basement of North Block houses the printing press that was traditionally used to print Budget documents for four decades, from 1980 to 2020. With the shift to a digital-first Budget, only a limited number of documents are now printed, while most dissemination happens through digital platforms.

The move to digital formats has also shortened the lock-in period to around five days, compared with up to two weeks earlier when printing hundreds of copies of voluminous documents required extensive manual processes.