NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday kicked off the annual budgetary exercise with the traditional ‘halwa ceremony’, which marks the beginning of the process of printing documents for the Union Budget. However, breaking the tradition this year, the Union Budget for 2021-2022 will be paperless for the first time and the budget document will be shared with MPs and officials via the new Union Budget Mobile App.
According to a finance ministry statement, this has been done to ensure hassle-free access to Budget documents for Members of Parliament (MPs) and the general public. “The mobile App facilitates complete access to 14 Union Budget documents, including the Annual Financial Statement (commonly known as Budget), Demand for Grants (DG), Finance Bill etc. as prescribed by the Constitution,” the statement said.
The ministry also said that the app has a user-friendly interface with embedded features including downloading, printing, search functions, zoom functions, bidirectional scrolling, etc. The documents will be available in English and Hindi, and users can use the app on both Android and iOS platforms. The app has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the guidance of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA).
According to the government, the Budget documents will be available on the Mobile App after the completion of the Budget Speech by the Union Minister of Finance in Parliament on February 1. The Budget session of Parliament will start from January 29 and will continue until April 8, with a gap between February 16 and March 7. Earlier, the Budget used to be presented on the last working day of February. However, this was changed in 2017.
Union Budget 2021-22 takes the digital route