Nirmala Sitharaman faces backlash as old posts show use of 'ரூ' symbol
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New Delhi: The BJP, which criticised the Tamil Nadu government for replacing the official rupee symbol (₹) with the Tamil letter 'ரூ' in the logo for the 2025-26 state budget, is now facing backlash after old social media posts of its own leaders using the same symbol surfaced.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had accused the DMK-led government of promoting separatism under the guise of regionalism. However, journalist and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair shared screenshots of her 2017 post where she had used the Tamil 'ரூ' symbol multiple times.
Similarly, BJP Tamil Nadu president Annamalai, who had questioned the DMK government over the issue and called it an insult to the national rupee symbol, was also found to have used 'ரூ' in several posts, including tweets from 2023 and last year.
This controversy comes amid Tamil Nadu’s ongoing disputes with the Centre over issues like the push to make Hindi an official language. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had unveiled the budget logo featuring the Tamil rupee symbol along with hashtags 'Dravidian Model' and 'TN Budget 2025.'
But why ma'am why. pic.twitter.com/Xfh8yk9Nxb
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) March 13, 2025
Thiru @annamalai_k Why use 'ரூ' symbol in your tweets instead of ₹ rupee symbol sir? https://t.co/Fxls2yytjz pic.twitter.com/UXrUsz7fxW
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) March 13, 2025
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NASA's stuck astronauts welcome newly arrived replacements to space station
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Cape Canaveral (AP): Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA's two stuck astronauts.
The four newcomers — representing the US, Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station's ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Indian-American Sunita Williams.
Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.
Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing's first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
Their ride arrived in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements' brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.
Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida's coast.
