| ₹ | |
|---|---|
Indian rupee sign | |
| In Unicode | U+20B9 ₹INDIAN RUPEE SIGN |
| Currency | |
| Currency | Indian rupee |
| Related | |
| See also | U+20A8 ₨RUPEE SIGN (Sri Lanka,Pakistan andNepal) |
 Category | |
TheIndian rupee sign ⟨₹⟩ is thecurrency symbol for theIndian rupee (ISO 4217: INR), the officialcurrency ofIndia. Designed byD. Udaya Kumar, it was presented to the public by theGovernment of India on 15 July 2010,[1] following its selection through an open competition among Indian residents.[2][3] Before its adoption, the rupee was signified byRs (a sign shared with several other countries), by ⟨Re⟩ or, in texts in Indian languages, an appropriate abbreviation in the language used.
The design is based on theDevanagari letter ⟨र⟩ (ra) with a double horizontal line at the top and theLatin capital letter ⟨R⟩ without its vertical bar.[4]
On 5 March 2009, the Indian government announced a contest to create a sign for the Indian rupee.[5][6] During the2010 Union Budget, then Union Finance MinisterPranab Mukherjee said that the proposed sign should reflect and capture the Indian ethos and culture.[7] From around 3,331 responses received, five symbols were shortlisted.[8] These were the entries from Nondita Correa-Mehrotra, Hitesh Padmashali, Shibin KK, Shahrukh J. Irani, and D. Udaya Kumar:[9][8] one of them was due to be selected at theUnion Council of Ministers of India meeting held on 24 June 2010.[10] However, the decision was deferred at the request of the Finance Minister,[11] and the final decision was made when they met again on 15 July 2010,[12] when they chose the symbol created byUdaya Kumar, Associate Professor atIIT Guwahati.[13] Though this rupee symbol was just selected as the winner, it was decided that it would be implemented within six months.[12] The symbol was adopted by theUnicode Consortium and released on 11 October 2010, in Unicode 6.0.[14] From that point on, depending on when thecomputer fonts used received the new symbol, many government documents, bank cheques, bank records, bills, etc., began to use the new symbol in place of the traditional ₨.
The new sign is a combination of theDevanagari letter ⟨र⟩ ("ra") and theLatin capital letter ⟨R⟩ without its vertical bar. The parallel lines at the top (with white space between them) makes an allusion to the tricolourIndian flag and an "equality sign" (theequals sign) that symbolizes a balanced economy.[4]
The final selected symbol was designed byD. Udaya Kumar, aBachelor of Architecture and (at the time) avisual design student at the Industrial Design Centre,IIT Bombay. The thoughts and philosophy behind the design are explained in his proposal document.[4]
TheMinistry of Finance 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.[15]
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Upon the symbol's selection on July 15, 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.[12] On 11 October 2010 (PDT), Unicode version 6.0, which included the Indian Rupee sign ⟨₹⟩, was released.[14] From then onwards, as computeroperating systems andcomputer fonts were updated to recognise it, the major banks started using the new Indian rupee sign, replacing the traditional ⟨Rs.⟩ in their documents, cheques and bills (and replacing ⟨रु⟩ in their Hindi documents). These updates also enabled the citizens of the country to use the sign, digitally which had not been possible before. The inclusion of the Rupee sign in official documents marked itsde facto adoption in the country, beginning on 12 October 2010, when its usage in official texts actually started.[citation needed] One of the oldest official government documents using the Rupee sign dates back to 8 December 2010, issued by theReserve Bank of India, and features the then-upcoming new design₹5 coin based on the theme 'Birth Centenary of Mother Teresa.'[16] On July 8, 2011, coins of denomination of₹1,₹2,₹5, and₹10 with the new rupee symbol have been put into circulation, marking its adoption in the physical currency for the first time.[17][18]
The Indian Postal Department printed postage stamps once with this new Indian rupee sign, when it issued the Commonwealth Games commemorative stamps on 3 October 2010.[19] Though it was only once, the next stamps, which were launched on 6 October 2010 based on the theme"Princely States", were issued again without the Rupee sign and since then, as of 2025, the Rupee sign has never been used on postage stamps.[20] Thus, this remained merely an attempt to begin the adoption of the sign rather than a real adoption, as the next series of stamps were again issued without the Rupee sign.
In his budget speech on 28 February 2011, the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, announced that the sign would be incorporated in future coin issues.[21] The sign was adopted into the banknotes gradually rather than all at once. The introduction of the sign on various denominations of bank notes occurred on the following dates:
On 10 August 2010, theUnicode Technical Committee accepted the proposed code positionU+20B9 ₹INDIAN RUPEE SIGN.[27] The character has been encoded in Unicode 6.0, and named distinctly from the existing characterU+20A8 ₨RUPEE SIGN, which continues to be available as thegeneric rupee sign.[28][29][14]
Ubuntu became the firstoperating system to support the Indian rupee symbol by default in 2010. Sinceits 10.10 version it has supported the symbol out-of-the-box,[30] as it was added to theUbuntu font family by a contributor.[31] Since then, it has been included in variousLinux distributions. On systems running Ubuntu, most otherLinux distributions andChromeOS, the symbol may be typed usingCtrl+⇧ Shift+u 20B9Space (or simplyAltGr+4 if the 'English (India)' language setting is used).
On 18 May 2011,Microsoft released an update KB2496898 toWindows Vista,Windows Server 2008,Windows 7 andWindows Server 2008 R2 operating systems to include support for this new Indian rupee symbol.[32] With the Windows update, it is now possible to usealt code text entry to obtain the Indian Rupee symbol:Alt+8377. On systems runningWindows 8 or later, the symbol can be typed using the 'English (India)' keyboard layout with the key combinationAltGr+4 (orCtrl+Alt+4 orCtrl+⇧ Shift+4[33]). Modern keyboards for the Indian market have the symbol engraved on the4 key as analternate graphic.[33]
Apple Inc. has added support for the rupee symbol withiOS 7 in 2013.[34]Mac OS X Lion (10.7) also includes the new Indian rupee symbol, which can be found in the Character Viewer. As ofMac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), users using theDevanagari keyboard can enter the new Indian rupee symbol by typing⌥ Option-4 (a combination that yields thecent symbol on a US keyboard layout).
Sailfish OS also provides the symbol in its default keyboard.
A symbol for thepaisa ⟨⟩ was also designed using the same concept as the symbol for rupee.[4] However, since paisa coins are no longer minted and, as of 2019[update] 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.
The Indian rupee sign selection process was challenged in theDelhi High Court,[35] 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.[35] On 26 November 2010, the Delhi High Court single bench dismissed the writ petition, stating there was no justifiable ground for the stated allegations.[36]
However, later the Delhi High Court, on 30 January 2013, inW.P. (c) 2449/2012 titledRakesh Kumar Singh Vs. Union of India (PIL) and listed before the Division bench of the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice V. K. Jain,[37] 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.[38]
On 11 April 2013, the Finance Ministry formed the guidelines for conducting public competitions for design of symbol or logo.[39]
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.[40]
