As announced by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi earlier, the process to collect iron from every village of the country for the world’s tallest statue of Sardar Patel will kick-start from December 15. As many as 14 teams headed by Gujarat Ministers will visit 14 States to collect discarded iron farm tools.
The ambitious 182-metre tall ‘Statue of Unity’ project expected to be completed in next three years, is the brainchild of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. The estimated cost of the project is over Rs 2,000 crore.
“Each Minister will have a team of 11 members that includes Government officials from various cadre — IAS, IPS, IFS as well as representatives of social organisations and local bodies. The team would co-ordinate with the BJP cadre in the respective States to collect iron equipments used in farming from each and every village,” said Gujarat’s Finance Minister Nitin Patel.
On October 31 — Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary — Modi had announced that at least one iron farm equipment from each seven lakh village of India would pay tribute to ‘The Iron Man’ of India Sardar Patel.
Patel, who is also Gujarat Government’s spokesman, informed that he would visit Uttar Pradesh, while his Cabinet rank colleagues Anandiben Patel, Saurabh Patel, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, Ramanlal Vora, Babu Bokhiria and Ganapatsinh Vasava will visit Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, Assam, Kerala and Odisha respectively. Another seven Ministers of State in the Modi Government including Vasuben Trivedi, Pradeepsinh Jadeja, Rajnikant Patel, Jaydrathsinh Parmar, Nanu Vanani, Jayanti Kavdia and Parbat Patel will visit Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Goa respectively.
He informed that collected iron equipments will be stacked in 36 different centres across the country and later on the collected iron would be sent to Kevadia Colony, the site of ‘Statue of Unity’. “We expect to collect nearly 5,000 tonnes of iron from the entire country, which will be used somewhere or other in the project,” he added.
The statue will be erected at Sadhubet, about 3.32 km far from Sardar Sarovar dam. The place is expected to emerge as a world-class tourist place. The statue will be three times taller than America’s iconic ‘Statue of liberty’.