Budget 202

FM goes hi-tech, reads out Budget speech from a tablet

Our Burea New Delhi | Updated on February 01, 2021 Published on February 01, 2021

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman holds a case containing a tablet device, during the Budget Session of the Parliament, at Parliament House in New Delhi, Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. Sitharaman replaced the 'bahi khata' and switched to a tablet, with the Union Budget set to be delivered in paperless form for the first time.   -  PTI

Budget 2021 will go down in history for a number of firsts including the Finance Minister presenting the first digital Budget and announcing that the eighth census of Independent India will be the first digital Census in the history of the country. The Finance Minister allocated ₹3,768 crore for carrying out the Census in Budget 2021-22.

In many ways this announcement takes forward the push that the Narendra Modi government has been giving to digitalisation. In September last year, Home Minister Amit Shah had announced that the 2021 Census will be conducted through a mobile phone application, moving away from the traditional pen and paper to give Digital India a boost. The nationwide exercise will be carried out in 16 languages, the Home Minister had added. The Census will have its reference date as March 1 this year, but for Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand it will be October 1, last year, he had said.

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Published on February 01, 2021
e-governance
Union Budget
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