New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has refused
to entertain a petition challenging selection of Hindi letter
`Ra` with its upper part crossed by a horizontal bar, as new
symbol of Indian currency rupee.
Justice S Muralidhar dismissed the petition filed by one
of the competitors Rakesh Kumar Singh, who had sent his entry
to the contest for selection of the symbol, saying "no
justifiable grounds have been made out by the petitioner for
interference with the decision of the Centre".
Singh had moved the high court challenging the union
cabinet`s decision to approve Kumar`s design as new rupee
symbol, alleging the members of the jury, formed to select the
symbol, had failed to make public the criteria adopted for the
winning entry.
"A marking system was used to rank the entries. The marks
awarded to top five entries were disclosed in a response on
September 30 to by the government to Singh under the RTI Act,
pointed out Justice Muralidhar.
"It cannot, therefore, be said that there was no criteria
adopted for evaluating the entries," he added.
The court accepted the central government`s submission
that the criteria for selection was published in the
advertisement inviting participation of all Indian citizens in
a competition for the design of the Rupee symbol in February
last year by the Department of Economic Affairs.
The court also accepted that in September 2009, a jury of
seven members had found 2644 applications as eligible and
finally the entry of an IIT graduate D Uaday Kumar was
selected as the symbol for rupee.
Justice Muralidhar rejected Singh`s claim that he had
obtained information through RTI application and also another
argument that there was no rule of procedure devised mandating
the presence of all jury members as only four out of seven
jury members were present at the time of selection of entries.
PTI
