GUWAHATI: A city-based vastu analyst has urged the Centre to tweak the rupee symbol.
Seven years ago, he claimed he had detected some faults in it and predicted bad days for Indian economy.
Observing that the lower horizontal line had slit the throat of rupee, he advised its removal. The sign of rupee is a combination of Devanagari letter “र” (ra) and the Latin capital letter “R” without its vertical bar (similar to the R rotunda). The parallel lines at the top are said to make an allusion to the national tricolor and depict an equality sign that symbolizes the nation's desire to reduce economic disparity.
“My prediction is proven correct. Due to severe vastu faults in the rupee symbol, India’s economic slowdown is getting worse. We all have seen how rupee is constantly weakening against dollar and the GDP falling,” the vastu analyst, Rajkumar Jhanjri, said.
In 2010, when the government started using the symbol, which was designed by an IIT-Guwahati professor D Udaya Kumar, rupee was going through a golden phase of 44 against dollar. The GDP was 9 per cent, he said.
“In 2011, I had written to then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, highlighting defects in the rupee symbol and suggesting corrective measures in the larger interest of the country,” Jhanjri said.
That year, he had also staged a hunger strike in Guwahati to draw the attention of the government on the same issue.
“The country today is going through a severe economic crisis but the government is not taking any step to make the rupee symbol vastu-compliant. I appeal to the government to react to the situation urgently or be prepared to face the worst days of Indian economy,” Jhanjri cautioned.
He is a well-known vastu analyst who has given advice for free to over 15,000 people, including former chief ministers, ministers, MLAs, bureaucrats former insurgent leaders etc, of Northeast.
A few years ago, he had visited the official bungalow of then Arunachal Pradesh CM Nabam Tuki and advised modifications in the building. The “faults” were partially corrected. Later, Tuki was ousted from power. His successor Kalikho Pul had committed suicide in the bungalow days after being unseated. And just months after that incident, a security guard of the bungalow committed suicide.
The first to occupy the sprawling building was former CM Dorjee Khandu, who was the father of incumbent CM Pema Khandu. The Khandu senior was killed in a chopper crash in 2012 when he was an occupant of the bungalow.
In 2017, the Arunachal government had converted the “haunted” bungalow into a guest house.