A statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, called Statue of Unity, the world’s tallest statue, measuring approximately 182 metres (597 ft) in height, was inaugurated on October 31, 2018. As the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India, Patel organized relief efforts for refugees fleeing to Punjab and Delhi from Pakistan and worked to restore peace. He led the task of forging a united India, successfully integrating into the newly independent nation those British colonial provinces that had been “allocated” to India. Besides those provinces that had been under direct British rule, he persuaded around 565 self-governing princely states that had been released from British suzerainty by the Indian Independence Act of 1947 to accede to India.
The 29.9-billion-rupee (430 million USD) ‘Statue of Unity’ overlooking the isolated Sardar Sarovar Dam is a pet project of Modi. He has predicted it will attract “hordes” of tourists, as the Statue of Liberty does in New York.
The project to commemorate Sardar Patel was announced by Modi in 2013 when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. The BJP had collected iron, soil and water from across the country to build the statue.
Picture Credit : Google
