Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled the Statue of Unity, built as a tribute to freedom movement icon Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on his 143rd birth anniversary today. Ready in a record 33 months, the Statue of Unity is located in the Narmada district of Gujarat. Against the picturesque backdrop of Vindhyachal and Satpura mountain ranges and the Narmada river, the giant memorial is the world’s tallest statue at 600 feet and is expected to be a major tourist destination in Gujarat.

Among Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourite projects, the statue is as much about himself as it is about Patel, a lifelong critic of wasteful expenditure. Modi has constantly claimed Patel’s legacy, given persistent Congress neglect of non-Gandhi-Nehru leaders in its pantheon.
Built at a cost of Rs. 2,989 crore, the statue depicts Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first Home Minister, wearing a traditional dhoti and shawl, towering over the Narmada River. Iron was collected from all over the country for the statue of Sardar Patel, also known as the Iron Man of India. Air Force planes showered flowers on the statue in a grand inaugural event on the banks of the Narmada river in Gujarat as PM Modi dedicated it to the nation.
At 182-metre, the statue is touted as the world’s tallest – it is 177 feet higher than China’s Spring Temple Buddha, currently the world’s tallest statue.

The statue has been designed by Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri recipient Ram Vanji Sutar, who also created the Mahatma Gandhi statue at the Indian Parliament, and has been built by Larsen and Toubro and the state-run Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd. It took about 250 engineers and 3,400 labourers to construct the statue in 33 months.

The statue will have a viewing gallery at the height of 193 metres from the sea level which can accommodate 200 visitors at a time. This gallery, at 153 metres height, will offer a view of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, its reservoir, and the Satpura and Vindhya mountain ranges.

The Statue of Unity is so towering that even if you are 6-feet high the statue will still be 100 times larger than you. From the outside, the Sardar Patel statue is filled with 1,700 tonnes of bronze and 1,850 tonnes of bronze cladding made up of 565 macro and 6,000 micro panels. The core of the statue is made up of 210,000 cu.m. of cement concrete, 18,500 tonnes of reinforced steel and 6,500 tonnes of structural steel.

Beyond the specifics of party politics, Gujarat’s new statue, like New York’s Lady Liberty, can be viewed as an expression of collective values. Having helped negotiate the incorporation of more than 560 of colonial India’s princely states into a single union, Patel arguably represents a national political ideal (hence the monument’s full name, The Statue of Unity).
It is nearly twice as tall as New York’s Statue of Liberty.

Let’s see what people have to say about the newly standing ‘Statue Of Unity’ In India-

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