Indian Rupee Symbol

The Indian Rupee Sign () is the currency sign used for the Indian rupee, the official currency of India. The Indian rupee sign was selected through a open competition among Indian residents. The design was presented to the public by the Government of India on 15 July 2010. The design of the Indian rupee sign is an amalgam of the Devanagari letter "र" (ra) and the Latin capital letter "R". The Indian Rupee sign is placed at U+20B9 in the Unicode character set.

Origin

Indian Rupee Symbol

On 5 March 2009 the Indian government announced a contest to create a sign for the Indian rupee. During the Union Budget 2010, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee mentioned that the proposed sign would reflect and capture the Indian ethos and culture. Five signs created by Nondita Correa-Mehrotra, Hitesh Padmashali, Shibin KK, Shahrukh J Irani, and D Udaya Kumar had been short listed from around 3331 responses received and one of them was to be finalized at the Union Council of Ministers of India meeting held on 24 June 2010. The decision was deferred by a request of the Finance Minister, and it was decided when they met again on 15 July 2010, and selected the symbol created by Udaya Kumar.

The selection process was challenged under the Right to Information Act in the Delhi High Court. The 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 dismissed the write petition since there was no justifiable ground for the stated allegations.

Design

The new sign is a amalgam of the Devanagari letter "र" (ra) and the Latin capital letter "R" without its vertical bar (similar to the R rotunda). The parallel lines at the top (with white space between them) are said to make an allusion to the tricolor Indian flag. and also depict an equality sign which symbolizes the nation's desire to reduce economic disparity.

Usage

The Indian rupee sign is currently used in all leading newspapers and can be seen in any price tag for products. Also various articles in papers where currency is to be used, this new sign is adopted instead of previous sign (Rs). Various new solutions for the usage of the Rupee Symbol have been also developed like Web Rupee provides an API which facilitates the usage of the Rupee symbol over the web. Additionally, the Ubuntu operating system is the first computer program to support the Rupee symbol out of the box. The old sign will still be used by other countries that use a Rupee, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal.The Indian government will try to adopt the sign within six months in the country and globally within 18 to 24 months.