Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman displayed the digital tablet wrapped in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ style red pouch as she heads to present Budget 2024 today. Sitharaman posed for the traditional picture outside her office with her team of officials before meeting the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan. She draped a white saree with a magenta border.
#WATCH | Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman along with her team with the Budget tablet outside the Ministry of Finance in North Block.
She will present the Union Budget today at around 11 AM in Lok Sabha. pic.twitter.com/NARqjCBOW1
— ANI (@ANI) July 23, 2024
Nirmala Sitharaman, in 2019 replaced the budget briefcase with traditional ‘bahi khata’ to carry the budget documents instead of the budget briefcase. It was the first time since independence that any Finance Minister replaced the briefcase or a hardbound leather bag with ‘bahi khata’.
In 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic the Finance Minister replaced the budget papers with a digital tablet.In 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, This was the first digital and paperless budget presentation.
Traditionally, people across the country have managed accounts and recorded bills in ‘bahi khata’. Traders, merchants, and small shopkeepers still use ‘bahi khata.’
After presenting the Budget in 2019, Sitharaman had said that replacing the briefcase with bahi-khata was a break from the colonial legacy.
Finance ministers over the years in different governments used the budget briefcase. Finance ministers in the Modi government- Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal have also used the budget briefcase.
Another colonial tradition in relation to budget was broken by Yahswant Sinha, finance minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Sinha presented the budget at 11am instead of the conventional time of 5pm.
The concept of a budget briefcase is a colonial legacy. The word ‘budget’ is originally derived from the french word ‘bougette’, which means leather briefcase. The tradition was started by the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Britain’s budget chief in the 18th century who used a ‘budget case’ to present the annual statement. William E Gladstone, British budget chief in 1860 carried budget documents in a red suitcase with Queen’s monogram.
In 1860, the then British budget chief William E Gladstone carried his papers in a red suitcase with the Queen’s monogram in gold.
In India, finance ministers have carried different coloured briefcases – red, black or tan.
India’s first finance minister RK Shanmukham Chetty carried a leather briefcase to present the Budget in 1947. In the 1950s, TT Krishnamachari carried a file bag whereas Jawaharlal Nehru carried a black briefcase.
Manmohan Singh during his tenure as Finance Minister delivered the iconic economic reforms carrying a black bag. Pranab Mukherjee used a red briefcase similar to Gladstone to deliver the budget speech.
The last finance minister to have carried a briefcase to present the budget was Piyush Goyal presenting the Interim Budget in February 2019. Goyal carried a red briefcase.
