RBI can use watermark figures of Rabindranath Tagore and APJ Abdul Kalam on currency instead of Mahatma Gandhi

Instead of Mahatma Gandhi, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is reportedly considering using the watermark figures of Rabindranath Tagore and APJ Abdul Kalam on a new series of banknotes of some denominations.

The finance ministry wants to explore possibilities of including watermarks of multiple figures on currency notes, according to media reports.

Different denomination of dollars in the United States have separate portraits of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln.

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Two separate sets of samples of Gandhi, Tagore and Kalam watermarks have been sent to IIT-Delhi Emeritus Professor Dilip T Shahani by the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), which is under the Finance Ministry.

Sahani, who specialises in Electromagnetic Instrumentation, has been told to choose from the two sets and present them for final consideration by the government.

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In 2020, one of nine RBI internal committees had recommended in its report that Tagore and Kalam, who were one of Bengal’s greatest icons and India’s 11th President respectively, should be used as watermark figures.

As a result, Mysore-based Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt Ltd and the SPMCIL’s Security Paper Mill at Hoshangabad were instructed by RBI to design their own sets of the watermark samples in 2021.

Prithwish Dasgupta had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Calcutta high court asking why currency notes in the country cannot have photographs of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose or any other important personality.

"Though Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru have garnered much of the credit for the successful culmination of the Indian freedom struggle, the contribution of Netaji is no less," Dasgupta said in his PIL.

(With inputs from agencies)

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