Who is Udaya Kumar, the designer of '₹’ symbol and son of ex-DMK MLA?

Tamil Nadu government released a new logo for rupee amid the state budget, which added on to the ongoing language row.

The logo released by the government had 'ru', the first letter of the Tamil word 'Rubaai' which denotes the Indian currency in the vernacular language.

The original symbol '₹' was designed by IIT Guwahati Professor D Udaya Kumar. He however has refused to be drawn into the controversy and said, 'it is a mere coincidence that his father was a DMK MLA'.

As the debate over the rupee symbol continues, let's take a closer look at Udaya Kumar, the designer of '₹'.

• The symbol '₹' was introduced in 2010, and Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam, a professor at IIT Guwahati, is the designer behind it. His design was selected from five shortlisted symbols.

• Udaya Kumar hails from a political family background, with his father, N Dharmalingam, being a former DMK MLA.

• Udaya attended La Chatelaine Junior College in Chennai, after which in 2001 he got his bachelor's degree in architecture from School of School of Architecture and Planning (SAP) at Anna University, Chennai.

• Having been done his master's MDes in Visual Communication, from the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) of IIT Bombay, he then did PhD in Design at Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay.

• For his winning design, Udaya Kumar was awarded a prize of ₹2,50,000. The design of the '₹' symbol, as explained by Udaya Kumar, is inspired by the letter 'Ra' in the Devanagari script.

• In an interview with DH in 2010, he shared, "In that, I have just added a strikethrough line to represent Indian Tricolour. And since I have incorporated the Devanagari script, it represents the Indianness of it because the top-line is quite unique and is not found in any other script." He also tried to "incorporate the Roman letter 'R'."

The letters are derived from the word Rupiah in Hindi and Rupees in English both denote the currency of India.

Now, after the row started, Udaya Kumar has reacted to the same.

"I don't have any reaction. It's the government which suddenly felt that there was a need for a change, and they wanted to implement their own script. This is up to the state government. So, I don't have anything to say about that. It's entirely up to the government," he said.

"My father was an MLA even before I was born. Now, he is old and living in our village, leading his life peacefully. It just happened to be a coincidence, probably I could have been somebody else as well," he added.

"It's just that he happened to be a DMK MLA and the DMK government changed the design. I do not see anything else beyond it as a pure coincidence which has happened," he said.

(With PTI inputs)