Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman again took a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ style pouch as she headed for Parliament to present the full Budget 2025-26 in a paperless format just like the previous years.
Draped in a white silk saree, she posed for the traditional ‘briefcase’ picture outside her office, along with her team of officials, before heading to meet the President.
With the tablet carefully kept inside a red cover with a golden-coloured national emblem embossed on it instead of the briefcase, Parliament will be her next destination after the call on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
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 and other Budget documents.
That tradition has continued today as well.