PTI, CHENNAI, MARCH 13, 2025 : Amid a fierce language tussle with the Centre, the Tamil Nadu government has replaced the Devanagari rupee symbol with a Tamil letter in its logo for the budget 2025-26, which will be tabled in the state Assembly on Friday. Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu is scheduled to table the budget on Friday. The logo for the budget, released by the government on Thursday, carried ‘ru,’ the first letter of the Tamil word ‘Rubaai,’ which denotes the Indian currency in the vernacular language. The logo also had the caption “everything for all,” indicating what the ruling DMK claims is its inclusive governance model.
While the move drew the ire of the BJP, the ruling DMK wondered if any rule barred such a depiction. Slamming the Stalin government’s move, BJP TN chief K. Annamalai asked the Chief Minister how stupid he could be to do it. “The DMK Government’s State Budget for 2025-26 replaces the Rupee Symbol designed by a Tamilian, which was adopted by the whole of Bharat and incorporated into our Currency.” “Thiru Udhay Kumar, who designed the symbol, is the son of a former DMK MLA. How stupid can you become, Thiru @mkstalin?” he said in a social media post. Annamalai also shared the logo of the 2024-25 TN budget that had the Devanagari symbol.
Responding, DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai said no law “opposed or stopped using Ru in Tamil.” “Then why such anger,” he asked in a post on ‘X.’ Senior BJP leader and former state unit chief Tamilisai Soundararajan also attacked the DMK. “We feel very sorry for the attitude of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and the Tamil Nadu government,” she told PTI Videos. “It was ‘stupidity,’ like Annamalai mentioned,” she said. She also asked why the change was made after so long and if they have “become Tamil now.” “They are against national integrity, national unity,” she charged.
AIADMK senior and former minister D. Jayakumar accused the ruling DMK dispensation of enacting a drama to divert people’s attention over the issues afflicting Tamil Nadu. “This is nothing but an opportunistic government, which wants to change the symbol. What will people expect from the budget tomorrow other than a reduction in the prices of milk and other essential commodities, a cut in property tax and power tariff, and other measures to reduce their burden,” Jayakumar told reporters here.
Kovai Sathyan, AIADMK spokesperson, said Stalin has gone one step further in the language row by dropping the Rupee symbol from the state Budget logo. “This is the culmination of all the drama and theatrics that he has shown in the last four years… my only question is will he borrow only if the symbol is incorporated in the currency? Will he release salary to the government staff only if this symbol is incorporated on the currency? Let him say it and AIADMK will be the first party to go support him,” Sathyan said.
DMK MLA Ezhilan Naganathan justified the move and said there was nothing wrong in using the mother tongue. “Using the mother tongue for all purposes is the theme of any Union Government principles that they have set. So, it is falling on those lines,” Ezhilan told reporters here. “It is very clear we had a Tamil transcript of the Budget and for that Tamil ‘Ru’ for Rupee has been used. So, we are using the mother tongue for official purposes, which is mandatory everywhere,” he explained.
BJP state vice-president Narayanan Thirupathy said Stalin has proved he would ‘stoop’ down to any level to hide the failures of his Government in the last four years by replacing the rupee symbol that has been accepted not only in India but throughout the world.
The development comes amidst the language row between the Centre and Tamil Nadu. The ruling DMK and other major political parties in the state have been opposing the three-language policy under the National Education Policy, alleging that it was an attempt to impose Hindi by the Union government, which has denied the charge. The DMK has argued that the Centre wants to ‘impose’ the north Indian language on Tamil Nadu through the implementation of the 3-language formula in the NEP and asserted that its government in the state will not follow the 3-language formula but only stick to its decades-old 2-language policy of Tamil and English.
According to the government portal “knowindia.gov.in,” 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 15th July, 2010,” it said.
