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Budget 2020: With a Kashmiri verse, Nirmala Sitharaman spotlights govt’s focus
The finance minister recited the lines from the poem written by Dinanath Kaul Nadim in Kashmiri and then translated it in Hindi as she presented her Budget 2020 speech in Parliament.
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday recited a verse from a poem in Kashmiri to reiterate the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s efforts towards the welfare of the people.
The finance minister recited the lines from the poem written by Dinanath Kaul Nadim in Kashmiri and then translated it in Hindi as she presented her Budget 2020 speech in Parliament.
“Humara watan khilte huye Shalimar Bagh jaisa, humara watan Dal Lake mein khilte huye kamal jaisa… Naujawan ke garam khan jaisa.. Mera waten, tera watan, humara watan duniya ka sabse pyara watan,” she said while translating the poem.
“Everything that we do here, everything that we speak through the budget and everything that the government does is for our country,” then she said.
Nadim was honoured with Sahitya Academy Award for Shihul Kul – a collection of his poems. Born in Srinagar in 1916, Nadim wrote hundreds of poems in English, Hindi, Urdu and Kashmiri.
Finance ministers are known to recite poems while presenting the Union Budget, the financial statement of the government, detailing its revenue and expenditure in the past, as well as estimated spending and projections for the coming year.
Sitharaman had presented her first budget in July last year, shortly after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government came to power in the Centre in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
