The Reserve Bank of India is considering adding portraits of Rabindranath Tagore and APJ Abdul Kalam to the Indian rupee bill, making Mahatma Gandhi no longer the only figure on the currency.
According to reports, the RBI and the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), which is under the Finance Ministry, sent two distinct sets of Gandhi, Tagore, and Kalam-watermarked notes to IIT Delhi Professor Dr. Dilip T Shahani.
Shahani has been reportedly instructed to select one of the two sets and submit it to the government for final approval.
According to reports, the final choice on which of the three images to use would be made at the “highest levels of government.”
According to reports, the three watermark samples were designed with government approval. Although no definitive decision has been made, efforts are underway to investigate the possibility of putting watermarks of various historical figures on bank notes.
Reportedly an RBI internal committee on adding security features for banknotes submitted its report in 2020, proposing that Tagoe and Kalam be included in currency alongside Gandhi.
In 2021, the RBI directed Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt Ltd of Mysuru and the SPMCIL’s Security Paper Mill in Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh, to create sets of the samples, which were subsequently sent to Shahani for examination.
Presently, certain foreign currencies, such as the US dollar and the Japanese yen, have portraits of multiple significant figures from their respective countries’ histories.
The United States, for example, contains portraits of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, while the Japanese yen includes images of bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, female writer Ichiyo Higuchi, and Yukichi Fukuzawa, all of whom are set to be replaced in 2024.
