Plea against new rupee symbol dismissed

Plea against new rupee symbol dismissed

The Delhi High Court has refused to entertain a petition challenging selection of Hindi letter 'Ra' with its upper part crossed by a horizontal bar, as new symbol of Indian currency rupee.

Justice S Muralidhar dismissed the petition filed by one of the competitors Rakesh Kumar Singh, who had sent his entry to the contest for selection of the symbol, saying "no justifiable grounds have been made out by the petitioner for interference with the decision of the Centre".

Singh had moved the high court challenging the union cabinet's decision to approve Kumar's design as new rupee symbol, alleging the members of the jury, formed to select the symbol, had failed to make public the criteria adopted for the winning entry.

"A marking system was used to rank the entries. The marks awarded to top five entries were disclosed in a response on 30^th September by the government to Singh under the RTI Act, pointed out Justice Muralidhar.

"It cannot, therefore, be said that there was no criteria adopted for evaluating the entries," he added.

The court accepted the central government's submission that the criteria for selection was published in the advertisement inviting participation of all Indian citizens in a competition for the design of the Rupee symbol in February last year by the Department of Economic Affairs.