Indian calendars follow a sidereal system of astronomy taking a fixed initial point on the ecliptic as the origin from which the longitudes are measured. Its position for the official Indian Calendar has been defined by the Calendar Reform Committee (1955) as the point on the ecliptic whose true tropical longitude was 23°15′00″ as on 21 March 1956, 0h UT. Its position was determined upto the year 1984 in accordance with Newcomb's value for general precession using the relation

where T is in centuries of 36525 ephemeris days from 1900 January 0.5 ET. Recent changes in the location and the motion of the equinox with reference to the epoch J2000.0 have necessitated corresponding changes to be included in the determination of the mean and true positions of the above initial point. The new algorithm worked out is

where T is in Julian centuries of 36525 days from J2000.0.