india

Updated: Oct 30, 2018 19:06 IST

The memorial to the ‘Iron Man of India’ Sardar Vallabhai Patel is set to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, five years after work began on the world’s largest statue.

Built at a cost of nearly Rs 2,300 crore, the statue is scheduled to be inaugurated at Kevadia in Narmada district of Gujarat on October 31, birthday of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Here are 10 things to know about the statue:

*At 182 metres, the Statue of Unity is larger than China’s Spring Temple Buddha, the largest statue in the world at present, and twice as large as America’s Statue of Liberty.

*Built at a cost of Rs 2,989 crore, the statue is 100 times taller than the average person.

*The Statue of Unity is about 3.5 km away from the Narmada dam and is located on a river island called ‘Sadhu Bet’. A 250-metre long bridge is the link to the island.

*An agricultural tool each was collected from around 7,00,000 villages across India, melted and used. In all, 135 tonnes of iron was donated by farmers to support the project.

*A 52-room, 3-star hotel, auditorium, galleries with light and sound shows and a museum on the life and times of Sardar Patel have been incorporated in the project.

*Teams comprising historians, artists and academicians, after studying various Sardar Patel statues across India, zeroed in on a design proposed by Noida-based sculptor Ram Sutar. The sculptor studied around 2,000 photos of Sardar Patel to create the face of the Statue of Unity.

*A visitor’s gallery with the capacity to accommodate a batch of 200 people offers a view of the Satpura and Vidhyanchal mountain ranges where the borders of Gujarat converges with Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. There are two high-speed elevators in the statue’s core that can accommodate 200 tourists at a time and take them up to the chest of the statue to the viewing gallery.

* A consortium of world class construction companies that executed the project are Michael Graves Architecture and Designs, Turner Construction and Larsen &Toubro.

*It is not only the tallest statue in the world, but also the one to be completed in the shortest period of time.

*The statue is designed to withstand winds of almost 180km/hr and earthquakes measuring 6.5 on Richter scale.