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.
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16April 2025
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.
