GUWAHATI: Hours after the Tamil Nadu government released a new rupee logo for the state budget, IIT Guwahati Professor D Udaya Kumar, who had designed the Indian rupee symbol, on Thursday refused to be drawn into the controversy over language and said it is a mere coincidence that his father was a DMK MLA.The DMK government in the southern state has replaced the Devanagari rupee symbol with a Tamil letter in its logo for the budget 2025-26, which will be tabled in the Assembly on Friday. While the move drew the ire of the BJP, the ruling party wondered if any rule barred such a depiction.”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,” Kumar told PTI.Kumar’s father N Dharmalingam was an MLA from the Rishivandiyam constituency in 1971 from the DMK party, which is in power in Tamil Nadu presently.”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,” The professor said.”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.
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