The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday cleared the air on using photos of key personalities like former president APJ Abdul Kalam and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore on the rupee banknote, and said that ‘there is no such proposal under consideration.’
The clarification by the central bank was issued after reports claimed that the RBI was considering changes to the existing currency and banknotes by replacing the face of Mahatma Gandhi with that of others. In a statement, the RBI rubbished the reports, and said, “It may be noted that there is no such proposal in the Reserve Bank.”
The reports also said that the Reserve Bank and the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), which is under the Finance Ministry, have sent two separate sets of samples of Gandhi, Tagore and Kalam-watermarked note to IIT-Delhi’s Dilip Shahani.
Sahani was to choose from the sets, and present them for the Centre’s consideration, the report added.
Currently, several nations in the world have been using the faces of prominent personalities on their banknotes. Japan’s Yen carries images of bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, female writer Ichiyo Higuchi, and Yukichi Fukuzawa on its bank notes as an honour of the key personalities. The US also uses images of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and others.
Many nations use images of emperors on their bank notes – like Egypt, Thailand, and Iran – use images of queens, and sultans among others on their notes.
Freedom fighters are also commonly used faces on bank notes, like South Africa using Nelson Mandela and Yusof bin Ishak in Singapore.
Over 23 countries in the world use writers as their faces of bank notes too, an infographic by pudding.cool suggested. Chile’s Gabriela Mistral, Mexico’s Hermila Galindo, Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren, and Colombia’s first Nobel Prize of Literature winner Gabriel García Márquez are some of the prominent ladies that are featured on the notes.
From people who discovered Penicillin to polymath in the Middle East, scientists are also featured in the notes of many countries.
