Rupee symbol designer reacts to Stalin govt using Tamil letter in Budget

NEW DELHI: IIT Guwahati Professor D Udaya Kumar, who designed the "₹" symbol for Indian currency, distanced himself from the ongoing tussle between Centre and DMK-led Tamil Nadu government over three-language policy
The controversy escalated after the DMK government replaced the Devanagari rupee symbol with a Tamil letter in its logo for the budget.
Udaya said that the using or not using symbols are entirely up to the government.
"I don't have any reaction. It's the government which suddenly felt that there was a need for a change and they wanted to implement their own script. This is up to the state government. So, I don't have anything to say about that. It's entirely up to the government," Kumar told news agency PTI.
"My father was an MLA even before I was born. Now, he is old and living in our village, leading his life peacefully. It just happened to be a coincidence, probably I could have been somebody else as well," He added.
Udaya Kumar, an academic and designer from Tamil Nadu, was the man behind the distinctive rupee symbol, which was officially adopted by the Indian government on July 15, 2010.
He is the son of a former DMK member of the legislative assembly from Rishivandiyam constituency, N Dharmalingam.
The second of four children, Udaya Kumar was born to N Dharmalingam, a contractor, and Jayalakshmi in 1978 in Chennai. While doing his bachelor's in architecture from Anna University, he designed posters and publications that helped him define his calling — visual design.
Designing the simple-looking Indian rupee symbol did not come easy for Udaya Kumar.
"The design I created was based on certain requirements that the government had asked for. It was a competition by the Government of India. I participated and my design got selected as the winner of the competition, and it was implemented then." Udaya said.
The rupee symbol is an amalgam of Devanagari "Ra" and the Roman Capital "R" with two parallel horizontal stripes running at the top representing the national flag and also the "equal to" sign.
"The Indian Rupee sign was adopted by the Government of India on July 15 2010," it added.
Udaya Kumar is a post-graduate in Design from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
This comes after a controversy erupted after Tamil Nadu government replaced the Rupee symbol "₹" with the Tamil script "ரூ" in the logo for the state's budget amid the ongoing language debate, with the BJP-led central government and the DMK-led Tamil Nadu government once again at odds over the NEP's three-language policy.
Tamil Nadu finance minister Thangam Thennarasu is set to present the 2025-26 budget on Friday. The budget logo features "ரூ" (ru), the first letter of the Tamil word "Rubaai," which represents the Indian currency in the Tamil language.