Nirmala Sitharaman chooses blue and cream saree for interim Budget 2024
Nirmala Sitharaman to present her sixth budget in a row. It will be an interim budget since Lok Sabha election 2024 is around the corner
As Nirmala Sitharaman arrived at the finance ministry office hours before she is set to present the Interim Budget 2024, the minister donned a blue and cream-coloured tussar saree – the body of the saree blue with cream-coloured kantha works all across.
Nirmala Sitharaman is known for her love for Indian textiles also sending a vocal for local message. Last year, the minister chose a handwoven red ilkal saree with Navalagunda embroidery. It was a gift by minister Pralhad Joshi from Dharwad, Karnataka. After she chose the one that she would wear on the Budget day, the embroidery was worked over it.
Off-white or cream colour is a favourite of the finance minister as she is often seen wearing this colour. Of the honourable mentions, in 2021, Siharaman wore a red and off-white pochampally saree.
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In 2022, Sitharaman chose a rusty brown Bomkai Saree.
In 2020, the minister was in an all-yellow silk saree with a thin blue border. In 2019, she wore a pink Mangalgiri saree with a golden border.
Saree, Red tablet cover: Constants of Nirmala Sitharaman's budgets
Apart from handwoven sarees, what has been a stylistic constant in Nirmala Sitharaman's budget is the red book that she carries every year. In 2019, the red book was a traditional bahi khata in her first budget. From 2021 onwards, the budget became paperless with Nirmala Sitharaman carrying a tablet in a red cover from which she reads the budget documents.
Interim Budget 2024 is crucial as this is the last budget of the second term of the Modi government. The finance ministry said in a review report that the Indian economy is projected to grow close to 7 per cent in the financial year 2024-25 which starts this April. India's economy grew 7.2 per cent in 2022-23 and 8.7 per cent in 2021-22. Budget 2023 was the last full budget of the second term of the Modi government which proposed to increase capital expenditure outlay by 33 per cent to ₹10 lakh crore in 2023-24, which would be 3.3 percent of the GDP.
