Nirmala Sitharaman's Parents In Parliament To Watch Her 1st Budget Speech

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's parents are in parliament to watch her first Budget speech on Friday.

Nirmala Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman Finance Minister, is expected to tackle a tricky balancing act with the need to boost growth and offer tax breaks without straining expenditure.

Savitri and Narayanan Sitharaman arrived in a separate car in parliament.

Even before the speech, Nirmala Sitharaman made a statement by swapping the iconic briefcase carried by all her predecessors for the traditional Indian bahi khata.

The Finance Minister posed with a red cloth folder enclosed with a string and embossed with the national emblem. She was flanked by her junior minister Anurag Thakur, Finance Secretary SC Garg, and Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian, among other officials.

Earlier, during the traditional halwa ceremony head of the Budget session, she had untied the ribbon instead of cutting it.