Update 14 March 2025, Time: 00:05 AM.
Amid the ongoing dispute with the Center over the trilingual formula, the Stalin government of Tamil Nadu has changed the rupee sign in the state budget.
Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Thangam Thenarasu is scheduled to present the budget tomorrow, March 14, at 9:30 am in the Assembly Hall of the Legislative Assembly-cum-Secretariat Complex located at Fort St. George Campus in Chennai. Meanwhile, the Stalin government’s standoff with the Center over the National Education Policy (NEP) and the trilingual policy has further deteriorated.
In the latest development, the Tamil Nadu government today revealed the front cover of the state’s budget documents, which shows the rupee symbol ‘R’ (Rs) in Tamil, as opposed to the official Devanagari-based symbol ‘₹’. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has also released a short video (less than half a minute) titled ‘Everything for Everyone’ ahead of the budget,
in which this has been revealed. It is worth mentioning that the Government of India had recognised ‘₹’ as the official symbol of the rupee on July 15, 2010, by combining the ‘र’ of the Devanagari script and the ‘R’ of the Roman script. The Stalin government of Tamil Nadu has been accusing the Narendra Modi government at the Center of imposing Hindi for a long time.
However, Chief Minister Stalin has not given the reason for changing the symbol of the rupee in the budget. BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit state president K Annamalai said on X, “The DMK government has changed the logo of the rupee in the 2025-26 budget, which was designed by a Tamilian and which was accepted by the entire country and was also included in the currency. It was designed by Uday Kumar, who is himself the son of a former DMK MLA. Stalin, how much more foolish will you act.
What is the trilingual formula and its history?
The ‘University Education Commission’ formed by the Nehru government in 1948 under the chairmanship of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who later became the second President of India, first introduced the trilingual formula, which later became the trilingual formula for school education. According to this, in North India, apart from Hindi and English, one of the languages of South India was to be taught, and in non-Hindi speaking states, Hindi was to be taught along with the regional language and English.
Later, this formula was also retained in the National Education Policy of 1986 and the New Education Policy of 2020 brought by the Rajiv Gandhi government. For the past several years, the Central Government has been saying that education is in the Concurrent List of the Constitution and it is the responsibility of the states to implement the three-language formula.
But the Education Ministry of the Central Government has now linked the education funds given to the states to the implementation of the new education policy, i.e. if the new education policy is not implemented, the states will not get education funds. Punjab also did not get funds under the PM Shri scheme along with West Bengal and a few other states under the same condition.
The Stalin government of Tamil Nadu is saying that the Central Government wants to impose Hindi in the states of South India through this. He wants to put pressure on these states by stopping central funds and grants under the terms of NEP. There has been a lot of debate between Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin regarding the above issue.
