Rupee Symbol Controversy

The Tamil Nadu government replaced the official Indian Rupee symbol (₹) with the Tamil letter ‘Roo’ (ரூ) in the state Budget 2025-26.

The replacement represents ‘Roobai,’ the Tamil term for currency.
The move has sparked a political dispute between the state and the central government.

About Indian Rupee Symbol

Rupee Symbol

Design of the Rupee Symbol (₹): Created by Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam, an IIT professor and son of a former DMK MLA.
Features of the Symbol:
- A fusion of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ (र) and the Roman ‘R’ to reflect India’s linguistic diversity.
- Two parallel horizontal strokes represent the Indian national flag and economic stability.
- Its unique design ensures easy recognition in global financial systems.
Selection Process: Chosen through a national competition in 2009, surpassing numerous other designs.
Representation Before 2010: Previously denoted as “Rs” or “INR,” leading to confusion with currencies of other rupee-using countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Official Adoption: The Government of India officially adopted the symbol on July 15, 2010.
Typography: The Unicode for the Indian Rupee Symbol is U+20B9.
- Unicode is a universal standard that assigns unique code points to characters, symbols, and scripts across languages.

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