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The Indian rupee sign ⟨₹⟩ is the
currency symbol A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned. A symbol may be positioned in various ways, acc ...
for the
Indian rupee The Indian rupee (symbol: ₹; code: INR) is the official currency of India. The rupee is subdivided into 100 '' paise'' (Hindi plural; singular: ''paisa''). The issuance of the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India. The Reserve ...
(
ISO 4217 ISO 4217 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines alpha codes and numeric codes for the representation of currencies and provides information about the relationships between individ ...
: INR), the official
currency A currency is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a ''system of money'' in common use within a specific envi ...
of
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
. Designed by D. Udaya Kumar, it was presented to the public by the
Government of India The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...
on 15 July 2010, following its selection through an open competition among Indian residents. Before its adoption, the most commonly used symbols for the rupee were ⟨ Rs⟩, ⟨Re⟩ or, in texts in Indian languages, an appropriate abbreviation in the language used. The design is based on the Devanagari letter ⟨र⟩ ( ra) with a double horizontal line at the top and the
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
capital letter ⟨ R⟩ without its vertical bar.


Origin

On 5 March 2009, the Indian government announced a contest to create a sign for the Indian rupee. During the 2010 Union Budget, then Union Finance Minister
Pranab Mukherjee Pranab Kumar Mukherjee ( ; born, 11 December 1935 – 31 August 2020) was an Indian statesman who served as the president of India from 2012 until 2017. He was the first person from West Bengal to hold the post of President of India. In a pol ...
said that the proposed sign should reflect and capture the Indian ethos and culture. From around 3,331 responses received, five symbols were shortlisted. These were the entries from Nondita Correa-Mehrotra, Hitesh Padmashali, Shibin KK, Shahrukh J. Irani, and D. Udaya Kumar: one of them was due to be selected at the
Union Council of Ministers of India The Union Council of Ministers is the principal executive organ of the Government of India, which serves to aid and advise the President of India in execution of their functions.Article 74 of the ''Constitution of India'' It is chaired by th ...
meeting held on 24 June 2010. However, the decision was deferred at the request of the Finance Minister, and the final decision was made when they met again on 15 July 2010, when they chose the symbol created by Udaya Kumar, Associate Professor IIT Guwahati.


Design

The new sign is a combination of the
Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
letter ⟨
Ra is a consonant of Indic abugidas. In modern Indic scripts, Ra is derived from the early "Ashoka" Brahmi letter after having gone through the Gupta script, Gupta letter . Most Indic scripts have differing forms of Ra when used in combination ...
⟩ ("ra") and the
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
capital letter ⟨ R⟩ without its vertical bar. The parallel lines at the top (with white space between them) makes an allusion to the tricolour
Indian flag The national flag of India, colloquially called Tiraṅgā (the tricolour), is a horizontal rectangular tricolour flag, the colours being of India saffron, white and India green; with the , a 24-spoke wheel, in navy blue at its centre. It wa ...
and also depict an equality sign that symbolizes the nation's desire to reduce economic disparity. The final selected symbol was designed by D. Udaya Kumar, a Bachelor of Architecture and (at the time) a
visual design Communication design is a mixed discipline between design and information-development concerned with how media communicate with people. A communication design approach is concerned with developing the message and aesthetics in media. It also crea ...
student at the Industrial Design Centre,
IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT- Bombay or IIT-B) is a Public university, public research university and Institute of technology, technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. IIT Bombay is mainly known for the hig ...
. The thoughts and philosophy behind the design are explained in this presentation.


Approval

Ministry of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfoli ...
and Department of Economic Affairs of the Government of India approved the sign. The approval was given by Sushil Kumar, Under Secretary of the Government of India in 2010.


Usage

Upon the symbol's adoption in July 2010, the Indian government said it would try to adopt the sign within six months in the country and globally within 18 to 24 months. Major banks have also started printing cheques with the new Indian rupee sign, where the traditional ⟨₨⟩ sign was used. The Indian Postal Department also started printing postage stamps with this new Indian rupee sign, when it issued the Commonwealth Games commemorative stamps on 3 October 2010. In his budget speech on 28 February 2011, the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, announced that the sign would be incorporated in future coin issues. Coins of denomination of 1, 2, 5, and 10 with the new rupee symbol have been put into circulation. As of January 2012, the new Indian rupee sign has been incorporated in the currency notes in the denominations of 10, 100, 500, and 1000 and as of 12 April 2012 this was extended to denominations of 20 and 50.


Unicode and keyboard entry

On 10 August 2010, the
Unicode Technical Committee The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California, Mountain View, California, U.S. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which ...
accepted the proposed code position . The character has been encoded in Unicode 6.0, and named distinctly from the existing character , which will continue to be available as the
generic rupee sign Rupee (, ) is the common name for the currencies of India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Afri ...
.
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
became the first
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
to support the Indian rupee symbol by default in 2010. Since its 10.10 version it has supported the symbol out-of-the-box, as it was added to the Ubuntu font family by a contributor. Since then, it has been included in various
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
distributions. On systems running Ubuntu, most other
Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
s and
ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...
, the symbol may be typed using (or simply if the 'English (India)' language setting is used). On 18 May 2011,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
released an update KB2496898 to
Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
,
Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...
,
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
and
Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2, codenamed "Windows Server 7" or "Windows Server 2008 Release 2", is the eighth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It was release ...
operating systems to include support for this new Indian rupee symbol. With the Windows update, it is now possible to use
alt code On personal computers with numeric keypads that use Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows, many characters that do not have a dedicated key combination on the keyboard may nevertheless be entered using the Alt code (the Alt numpad input ...
text entry to obtain the Indian Rupee symbol: +. On systems running
Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
or later, the symbol can be typed using the 'English (India)' keyboard layout with the key combination + (or ++ or ++). Modern keyboards for the Indian market have the symbol engraved on the key as an
alternate graphic AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on computer keyboards. It is primarily used to type characters that are used less frequently in the language that the keyboard is designed for, such as foreign currency symbols, List of typographi ...
.
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
has added support for the rupee symbol with
iOS 7 iOS 7 is the seventh major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 6. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, 2013, and was released on September 18 ...
in 2013.
Mac OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...
(10.7) also includes the new Indian rupee symbol, which can be found in the Character Viewer. As of Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), users using the
Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
keyboard can enter the new Indian rupee symbol by typing - (a combination that yields the cent symbol on a US keyboard layout).
Sailfish OS Sailfish OS is a paid Linux-based operating system based on free software, and open source projects such as Mer as well as including a closed source UI. The project is being developed by the Finnish company Jolla. The OS first shipped wit ...
also provides the symbol in its default keyboard.


Symbol for Paisa

A symbol for the
paisa Paisa (also transliterated as ''pice'', ''pesa'', ''poysha'', ''poisha'' and ''baisa'') is a monetary unit in several countries. The word is also a generalised idiom for money and wealth. In India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the ''paisa'' currently equa ...
⟩ was also designed using the same concept as the symbol for rupee. However, since paisa coins are no longer minted and, as of 2019 most denominations of the paisa have been demonetized, they are not in circulation. As the RBI had already stopped minting any paisa coins before this proposal, the proposed symbol never appeared on any coins.


Controversy

The Indian rupee sign selection process was challenged in the
Delhi High Court The High Court of Delhi ( Hindustani: दिल्ली उच्च न्यायालय; ''dillī uchcha nyāyālaya'') is the high court in Delhi, India. It was established on 31 October 1966, through the ''Delhi High Court Act, 1966. ...
, by petitioner Rakesh Kumar, who was a participant in the competition, described the process as "full of discrepancies" and "flawed", and named the Finance Ministry and the chairman of Indian Rupee Symbol Selection Committee as respondents. On 26 November 2010, the Delhi High Court single bench dismissed the writ petition, stating there was no justifiable ground for the stated allegations. However, later the Delhi High Court, on 30 January 2013, in ''W.P. (c) 2449/2012'' titled ''Rakesh Kumar Singh Vs. Union of India'' (PIL) and listed before the Division bench of the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice V. K. Jain, taking cognizance of and in view of the irregularities and arbitrariness involved in public competitions for designing symbols or logos or designing logos by other methods of important national bodies or institutions, in their judgment directed all the ministries of the Government of India to formulate or prepare guidelines to ensure transparency, wider participation of public and also that such guidelines should be of uniform nature and in uniformity with each others. On 11 April 2013, the Finance Ministry formed the guidelines for conducting public competitions for design of symbol or logo. In the logo for the 2025-26 Tamil Nadu state budget, the official rupee symbol '₹', used in the previous year logo, was replaced with the Tamil letter 'ரூ' (pronounced 'Roo'), representing 'Roobai,' the Tamil term for rupee. The decision received various reactions from political figures and parties.


Character mappings


See also

*
Currency symbol A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned. A symbol may be positioned in various ways, acc ...
*
Rupee sign The rupee sign "₨" is a currency sign used to represent the monetary unit of account in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Mauritius, Seychelles, and formerly in India. It resembles, and is often written as, the Latin character sequence "Rs", of w ...


References


External links


Udaya Kumar's design proposal for the Indian rupee sign

Official announcement of the sign

WebRupee ₹ Drupal Project

rupyaINR, guidance for use of the Indian Rupee Symbol on the web
{{Rupee Currency symbols Symbols introduced in 2012 Rupee