The statue stands on Sadhu island on the Narmada in Gujarat

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Statue Location, Height, Cost: The much-anticipated inauguration of the ‘Statue of Unity’- a monument to commemorate Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is scheduled for Wednesday. The date for the inauguration of the statue is chosen to be October 31 as it happens to be the 143rd birth anniversary of the national icon, who is fondly remembered as the ‘Iron Man of India’, for his role in the unification of princely states after the independence from the British.

The statue stands on Sadhu island on the Narmada in Gujarat. The Statue of Unity, which stands 182-metre tall, dwarfs New York’s Statue of Liberty by twice its size and almost four times the height of Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer. The number ‘182’ was a conscious choice representing the 182 Assembly constituencies of Gujarat. The total cost of the project is said to be Rs 2,989 crores. From sea level, the height would be 237.35 metres — the 70-metre hillock of Sadhu Bet having been flattened to 55 metres to lay the foundation.

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Altogether, 4,076 labourers were reported to have worked on the project.

Apart from the statue itself, there are five other related sites that are constructed along with the world’s tallest statue. These include the walkway, the ticket counter, the food court, the four-lane approach highway, and the ‘Shrestha Bharat Bhavan’- a 52-room three-star lodging facility for the visitors coming to see the monument.

Altogether, 4,076 labourers were reported to have worked on the project. Around a thousand of those have worked on the cladding of the statue alone, which has been forged in China. They include around 800 locals and about 200 workers from China, who had been working in batches for two-three months each since September 2017.

The total cost of the project is said to be Rs 2,989 crores.

A top Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd official informed The Indian Express that the statue can sustain wind velocity of 220 kilometres per hour and earthquakes measuring up to 6.5 on the Richter Scale.