Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Sunday said his government replaced the ‘Rs’ symbol with ‘Ru’ in the budget 2025-2026 to demonstrate DMK’s commitment to the language issue. He was referring to his allegation that the Central government has been trying to foist Hindi on Tamil Nadu by enforcing the National Education Policy (NEP).
“I had released the budget logo. We had put ‘Ru’ in it to show how committed we are to the language policy. That’s all. But, those who don’t like Tamil have made it big news,” MK Stalin said in a video.
The Tamil Nadu government’s replacing the rupee symbol with ‘Ru,‘ the first letter of ‘Rubaai’ that denotes the national currency in the vernacular language, had kicked up a row.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had slammed the MK Stalin government for the move, saying it promoted “secessionist sentiment”.
The CM, in his regular “Ungalil Oruvan” (One among you) video address, also took a jibe at Sitharaman for her criticism on the rupee symbol issue, saying she could respond on the matter but not on Tamil Nadu’s plea for funds.
“We had pleaded with the Union Government to give funds for a 100-day job scheme (MGNREGA), disaster management, and release school education funds. The union finance minister (Sitharaman) did not respond to these, but has spoken on this matter,” he said.
MK Stalin claimed Nirmala Sitharaman had herself used the word ‘Ru’.
“In English, Rupees is written simply as Rs. That doesn’t matter to them, but this seems to be an issue for them. Overall, our budget was a hit across the nation, as was Tamil,” he said.
MK Stalin has warned the Centre that he would implement the NEP and the three-language policy. He warned of starting a language war if the BJP-led government imposed Hindi on Tamil Nadu. He also accused the Centre of plotting to reduce the state’s Lok Sabha seats by way of delimitation.
With inputs from ANI, PTI