Budget 2024-25: Nirmala Sitharaman meets President ahead of Budget speech

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday called on President Droupadi Murmu before presenting the full Budget for 2024-25.

As per established tradition, the finance minister met the President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan before heading to Parliament.

President Murmu offered ‘dahi-chini’ (curd-sugar), considered auspicious, to Sitharaman before she left for Parliament to present the Union Budget.

The Union Cabinet met thereafter to clear the Budget.

Before the actual presentation in Parliament, the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will approve the Budget for fiscal 2024-25 (April 2024 to March 2025).

Expectations are running high as Sitharaman presents her seventh Budget in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The Budget would give a glimpse of the Modi government’s performance in the past 10 years while outlining the roadmap to make India a developed nation.

Sitharaman continued with the tradition she set in 2019, carrying the budget speech in a ‘bahi-khata’, which she used after dropping the briefcase tradition. She keeps a digital tablet in a red ‘bahi khata’ style pouch.

The economy is projected to expand by 6.5-7 per cent in the current fiscal, as per the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Monday.