India inaugurated the world’s biggest statue

India yesterday inaugurated the world’s biggest statue which is a 182 metre (600 feet) high reproduction of an Indian independence hero.   Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially opened the tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, with an air force jet flyover, helicopters showering flowers on the statue and fireworks in the green, orange and white national colours..

“Today is a day that will be remembered in the history of India,” said Modi who hailed Sardar Patel’s “strategic thinking” in bringing together the disparate country after independence in 1947 and the Statue of Unity as “a symbol of our engineering and technical prowess.” The statue is more than twice the size of New York’s Statue of Liberty and also dwarfs the 128 metre (400 feet) high Spring Temple Buddha in China, the world’s next-biggest statue.

It is made up of nearly 100,000 tonnes of concrete and steel. Online booking to visit the Statue of Unity has opened with a 350 rupee ($4.75) admission fee for the 153-metre-high observation deck. Authorities hope the statue will attract 15,000 visitors a day to the remote corner of Gujarat, which is about 100 kilometres from the nearest city of Vadodora.

India is also working on a giant statue of 17th-century warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji, riding a horse and brandishing a sword, which should dominate the Mumbai shoreline from 2021. The current design would make it 212 metres high.