Indian Rupee Symbol–How to Type it?

Indian Rupee symbol has been announced and has been sent to the government for approval.
And if you are wondering how will you type the rupee symbol using your keyboard, well it might
take a year or so to get the symbol in action (to gain acceptance in India) and two years for
international acceptance.

Technically speaking, the symbol will be first sent to Unicode

Consortium’s technical committee, in order to include the same in Unicode database.
The symbol will also be included in the Indian Standards, viz. 13194:1991 – Indian Script Code
for Information Interchange (ISCII), through an amendment to the existing list by the Bureau of
Indian Standards. The ISCII specifies various codes for Indian languages for processing on
computers along with the key-board lay outs.

While the Government of India can mandate hardware manufacturers to include the symbol in
keyboards, it can also be accessed through assigned keyboard combination or via the operating
system’s Character Map, post approval from the Unicode Consortium (via).

This article is about the currency sign devised for the Indian rupee in July 2010. For other uses,
see  Rupee sign.
Indian rupee sign

The Indian rupee sign ( ) is the currency sign used for the Indian rupee, the official currency of India.
The design was presented to the public by the government of Indiaon 15 July 2010.[1] The international
three-letter code (according to ISO 4217) for the Indian rupee is INR.

Contents

 [hide]

1 Origin

2 Design

3 Usage

4 Unicode

5 See also

6 Referenc

es

7 External

links

[edit]Origin

On 5 March 2009 the Indian government announced a contest to create a sign for the Indian rupee. [2]
[3]
 During the Union Budget 2010, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee mentioned that the proposed sign
would reflect and capture the Indian ethos and culture. [4]

Five signs created by Nondita Correa-Mehrotra, Hitesh Padmashali, Shibin KK, Shahrukh J Irani, and D
Udaya Kumar[5][6] had been short listed[6] from around 3331 responses received and one of them was to be
finalized at the Union Cabinet meeting held on 24 June 2010. [7] The decision was deferred by a request of
the Finance Minister,[4] and it was decided when they met again on 15 July 2010, [1]and selected the
symbol created by Udaya Kumar.[1][8]

The selection process has been challenged under the Right to Information Act in the Delhi High Court.
The petitioner, Rakesh Kumar, was a participant on the competition, described the process as "full of
discrepancies" and "flawed", and named the Finance Ministry and and the chairman of Indian Rupee
Symbol Selection Committee as respondents.[9]
[edit]Design

The new sign is a amalgam of the Devanagari letter "र" (ra) and the Latin capital letter "R" without its

vertical bar (similar to the R rotunda). The parallel lines at the top (with white space between them) are
said to make an allusion to the tricolor Indian flag.[10]

[edit]Usage

IDBI Cheque with the Indian rupee sign

The Indian government will try to adopt the sign within six months in the country and globally within 18 to
24 months.[1]

The Indian rupee sign is currently used in all leading newspapers and can be seen in any price tag for
products. Also various articles in papers where currency is to be used, this new sign is adopted instead of
previous sign (Rs). Various new solutions for the usage of the Rupee Symbol have been also developed
like WebRupee provides an API which facilitates the usage of the Rupee symbol over the web.
Additionally, the Ubuntu operating system is the first computer program to support the Rupee symbol out
of the box.[11] The old sign will still be used by other countries that use a Rupee, such as Sri
Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal.

Major banks have also started printing cheques with the Indian rupee sign where traditional 'Rs.' sign was
used (pictured). As seen in the image, Indian Postal Department has also started printing postage stamps
with the Indian rupee sign.