Budget 2019: Here's why finance ministers flash "briefcase" before budget

The interim finance minister Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget on Friday in what is regarded as the sixth and final budget presentation of the Narendra Modi-led government before the nation goes for the Lok Sabha elections due in May.

As has been the tradition since the independence of the country, the finance minister posses with a “briefcase” outside the parliament for photographers before delivering his budget speech.

The tradition began when the country’s first finance minister R K Shanmukham Chetty presented the country’s first ever budget in the parliament on November 26, 1947.