{"id":19713,"date":"2025-10-27T03:30:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T22:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=19713"},"modified":"2025-10-28T16:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T10:56:13","slug":"halwa-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/halwa-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Halwa Ceremony?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Halwa Ceremony:\u00a0<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The ceremony is a ritual in which traditional dessert \u2018halwa\u2019 is prepared and served to officials and staff <strong>members of the finance ministry<\/strong> who <strong>are involved in the preparation<\/strong> of the <strong>budget.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is a kind of a <strong>\u2018send-off\u2019 for finance ministry officials <\/strong>and staff involved in the preparation of the Union government\u2019s annual financial statement.<\/li>\n<li>They enter what is <strong>called a \u2018lock-in\u2019 period<\/strong>, during which they stay in the basement of North Block, cut off from the world outside with a view to maintaining the secrecy around the final budget document.<\/li>\n<li>These stringent measures date back to a leak that occurred in 1950. A portion of the Union Budget was leaked while it was being printed at Rashtrapati Bhawan. As a result of the leak, the then Finance Minister, John Matthai, resigned.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Key facts about the Union Budget of India<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/budget-annual-financial-statement\/\" target=\"_blank\">Union Budget<\/a> of India also referred to as the <strong>Annual Financial Statement<\/strong> in the <strong>Article 112<\/strong> of the Constitution of India, is the annual budget of the Republic of India.<\/li>\n<li>It is also known as the Annual Financial Statement of the Government; however, the term &#8220;<strong>budget&#8221; is not mentioned<\/strong> in the <strong>Constitution.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Q1: What is a budget?<\/h2>\n<p>It is an annual financial statement for a specific period of time, usually a year, that outlines projected income and expenses. It is used as a tool for managing financial resources and achieving specific goals such as mobilization of resources, fiscal consolidation, etc.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/business\/economy\/fm-halwa-ceremony-final-stage-budget-preparation-9457457\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">FM participates in customary \u2018halwa\u2019 ceremony; marks final stage of Budget preparation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Halwa Ceremony is a ritual in which traditional dessert \u2018halwa\u2019 is prepared and served to officials and staff members of the finance ministry who are involved in the preparation of the budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}