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‘Flaws in selection of rupee symbol’

Based on replies to an RTI query, two of the contestants claim that the jury did not follow guidelines during selection.

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Days after its selection by the finance ministry, the symbol of the rupee has got embroiled in a controversy. Two of the unsuccessful candidates have claimed that the selection process to choose the new rupee symbol is full of discrepancies and is flawed. The duo — Anil Khatri and R K Singh — have used RTI replies given by the finance ministry to assert their claim. Designs of both were short-listed, but they didn’t make it to the last five.

Replying to a RTI application, the Union finance ministry told them that a total of 3,331 designs were finally put up for selection of which five designs were short-listed. The process that had started in February last year culminated after the Union Cabinet selected the entry by D Udaya Kumar.

The five designs were selected by a seven-member special jury, comprising representatives of the Union government, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and prominent art institutes like the National Institute of Design and the JJ Institute of Applied Art.

The designs were chosen in three meetings — September 29-30 and November 16 last year — in a span of 17 hours. Going by calculations, on average the jury spent 18.37s on every design, Singh said.

“The RTI reply also revealed that during the selection process jury members were not provided with brief explanations of design. The jury was just handed over the 3,331 designs and of those they selected five. It is disturbing that jury just went by design and not the explanation behind it,” Singh claimed.

 “While selecting (the symbol), the jury did not give any grades or marks. The grading or marks were only done when the five candidates made a final presentation before jury on Dec 15, 2009,” Singh told DNA.

The ministry admitted that they did not upload the Hindi version of the guidelines on the Internet, which Singh said was a violation of Rajbhasha Act. As per the guidelines, the symbol should represent the historical and cultural ethos of the country. The reply further revealed that among the seven-member jury, Dr T Kumar, who was representing cultural ministry was not present in any of the three meetings.

“She was appointed by the finance ministry but the ministry does not have any record of the reasons of her absence,” Khatri said.      

In the meetings of September 29-30, yet again three jury members including T Kumar were absent. 

“As per the guidelines, the symbol has to be in the Indian national language script or a visual representation. But Kumar’s design is a combination of Devnagari and Roman script which is also a violation of the guidelines,” Khatri said.

Khatri also claimed that as per guidelines, a participant could have sent a maximum of two entries while Kumar had sent four designs which was a clear violation. “The ministry confirmed that they received four designs from Kumar but they considered the first two designs as the entry. When asked about which two came to finance ministry first, the ministry was not able to produce any document supporting that claim,” Khatri said.

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