Designed by D. Udaya Kumar, it was presented to the public by the Government of India on 15 July 2010,[1] following its selection through an open competition among Indian residents.

[8] These were the entries from Nondita Correa-Mehrotra, Hitesh Padmashali, Shibin KK, Shahrukh J. Irani, and D. Udaya Kumar:[9][8] one of them was due to be selected at the Union Council of Ministers of India meeting held on 24 June 2010.

The parallel lines at the top (with white space between them) makes an allusion to the tricolour Indian flag and also depict an equality sign that symbolizes the nation's desire to reduce economic disparity.

[15] In his budget speech on 28 February 2011, the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, announced that the sign would be incorporated in future coin issues.

[23] On 10 August 2010, the Unicode Technical Committee accepted the proposed code position U+20B9 ₹ INDIAN RUPEE SIGN.

On systems running Ubuntu, most other Linux distributions and ChromeOS, the symbol may be typed using Ctrl+⇧ Shift+u 20B9Space (or simply AltGr+4 if the 'English (India)' language setting is used).

The Indian rupee sign selection process was challenged in the Delhi High Court,[32] by petitioner Rakesh Kumar, who was a participant in the competition, described the process as "full of discrepancies" and "flawed", and named the Finance Ministry and the chairman of Indian Rupee Symbol Selection Committee as respondents.

(c) 2449/2012 titled Rakesh Kumar Singh Vs. Union of India (PIL) and listed before the Division bench of the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice V. K. Jain,[34] taking cognizance of and in view of the irregularities and arbitrariness involved in public competitions for designing symbols or logos or designing logos by other methods of important national bodies or institutions, in their judgment directed all the ministries of the Government of India to formulate or prepare guidelines to ensure transparency, wider participation of public and also that such guidelines should be of uniform nature and in uniformity with each others.