June 6, 2022: The Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are understood to be considering using images of Rabrindranath Tagore and APJ Abdul Kalam on a new series of banknotes (currency notes).

Till date, the Indian currency notes only carry image of Mahatma Gandhi – father of the nation.

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with contextual modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

On the other hand, APJ Abdul Kalam was an Indian aerospace scientist who also served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007.

He is known as the “Missile Man of India” for his work on development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. Kalam was widely referred to as the “People’s President”.

If images of Rabindranath Tagore and APJ Abdul Kalam are introduced in the banknotes, this will be in line with the system in the United States.

In United States, different denominations of dollars carry portraits of some of the Founding Fathers such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton and also several presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.

According to reports, the RBI and the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), which is under the finance ministry, are learnt to have sent two separate sets of samples of Gandhi, Tagore and Kalam watermarks to IIT-Delhi Emeritus Professor Dilip T Shahani.