Mumbai: It will take Rs 2,000 cr to make Shivaji statue environment friendly

The Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) on Thursday gave its nod to construct a grand statue for Maratha warrior king Shivaji in the Arabian Sea off the Mumbai coast. Union Minister of State for Environment and Forest Prakash Javadekar said clearance has been given and a notification for the same would be out soon.

This report in the Economic Times quoted ministry sources and said the Rs 400 crore project will cost approximately Rs 2,000 crore “to ensure that it does not cause any environmental damage.”

The ET reported that the statue would be erected on a bedrock with a total area of 15.96 hectares. It will be 1.5km from Raj Bhawan. A sewage treatment plant and a desalination plant with “wind mills, solar shelters, solar light poles, tidal turbines etc” which ensure that the statue is ecologically sustainable.

“The issue of having a statue of Shivaji Maharaj, which was pending for the last few years, has been sorted out. The chief minister of Maharashtra had a discussion with me a few days back and I had assured him to expedite the process soon. Today, we have given clearance for the issue and a notification would be out shortly,” Javadekar had told a news conference on Thursday night as quoted by PTI.

The proposed 309-feet statue, as reported by PTI, was announced by the Congress-led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra in 2004 and 100 crore was sanctioned for the same, a report in the NDTV stated. The issue had been pending since long as it had not got environment clearance. The memorial was supposed to be built on the lines of the Statue of Liberty in the US and Swami Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari.

Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had asserted that the statue would be the tallest in the world – twice the size of the Sardar Patel statue as proposed by the BJP government in Gujarat which is also known as the Statue of Unity.

The Statue of Unity will be 182 metre high - double the height of the Statue of Liberty - and is being built on Narmada.

The proposed 309-foot-tall statue, planned to be located off the Marine Drive along the Arabian Sea, had faced opposition from the Navy. It was also pointed out that the project will violate the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) norms.

With inputs from PTI