Five years after its foundation was laid on 31st October 2013 by the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, the Statue of Unity will be inaugurated by Modi, who is now the Prime Minister of India on 31st October 2018. As the world’s tallest statue gets unveiled, here are ten facts about the statue you must know.
- At 182 meters, it will be the world’s tallest statue. The Statue of Liberty in the United States is 93 meters high.
- Located at the Sardar Sarovar Dam on Narmada river in Gujarat, the statue will have a viewing gallery at 153 meters which will overlook the dam.
- A ‘Loha campaign‘ was run under which used iron farming implements were collected as a symbolic contribution of farmers towards the statue of the ‘Iron Man of India’.
- The iron collected through the campaign was melted, converted into ‘rebar’ and used in the foundation of the statue.
- 25,000 tonnes of iron and 90,000 tonnes of cement was used in the construction.
- A walkway, four-lane approach highway and a three-star lodging facility with 128 rooms are constructed for tourists.
- The statue will be able to withstand wind velocity up to 60 meters a second as well as earthquakes.
- Approximate cost of construction is Rs. 2,989 crore and as many as 2,500 workers have worked on the project.
- It is estimated that the statue will generate as many as 15,000 direct jobs for people every year.
- The statue is located at about 150 km from Nadiad, where Sardar Patel was born on 31st October 1875.
There has been a lot of misinformation spread about the Statue of Unity. Congress President Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly told the lie that the statue will be ‘Made in China’. In the year 2015, Outlook had claimed that L&T had given the work of constructing the statue to a Chinese Foundry. The article mocked Modi’s “Make in India” campaign, by branding the Patel statue as “Made in China”. We had debunked this lie by Outlook in 2015 itself. L&T had in fact issued two statements countering this baseless story.
Similarly, recently a Youth Congress leader was caught spreading fake photo of Statue of Unity accusing Modi of making a ‘defective’ statue of Patel on public money. However, it was found that the picture used was not of the Statue of Unity but it was another statue made by the sculptor Jashuben Shilpi.
