Mahatma Gandhi may soon no longer be the only personality on the Indian rupee banknote as the Reserve Bank of India is considering adding images of Rabindranath Tagore and APJ Abdul Kalam to the currency.
The RBI and the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), which is under the Finance Ministry, are learnt to have sent two separate sets of samples of Gandhi, Tagore and Kalam-watermarked notes to IIT-Delhi's Dilip Shahani, The New Indian Express reported.
Shahani has been reportedly asked to choose from the sets and present them for government's consideration, and the decision to pick one or all the images on the banknotes will be taken at the "highest level," the report added.
Sources told the publication that 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 instructed Mysuru-based Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt Ltd and the SPMCIL’s Security Paper Mill at Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh to design sets of the samples, which were then sent to Shahani for examination.
DH could not independently verify the report.
Currently, some foreign currencies like the US dollar and Japanese yen carry the images of multiple prominent personalities through their country's history. The US, for instance, has photos of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln among others, while the yen carries images of bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, female writer Ichiyo Higuchi, and Yukichi Fukuzawa - though they are all slated for replacement in 2024.