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Gujarat’s 3,000 Crore Statue of Unity Gets Flooded, Officials Claim It's a Design Feature

While designing the world’s tallest statue, it seems like officials forgot to account for the monsoons.
Shamani Joshi
Mumbai, IN
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Photo via Pexels

The colossal Statue of Unity was erected on October 31, 2018, in Gujarat to honour the Indian freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhai Patel. But even while officials spent over Rs 3,000 crore on it, they forgot to factor in basic Indian climatic conditions.

On June 29, the viewing gallery of the world’s tallest statue, which reaches a height of 500 ft, was overflowing with rainwater, as puddles covered the floor and rain dripped off the roof. "We had come with great hope to see the world's tallest statue. But we are feeling bad looking at the statue in the rain. It has not rained heavily, and already the main hall and viewing gallery of the statue is filled with water. It is unfortunate," a visitor told news agency PTI. Social media was immediately flooded with people criticising officials for not bothering to think about even something as natural as rain while designing it.

However, the Statue of Unity’s official Twitter handle put out a statement saying that while high-velocity winds brought rainwater into the viewing gallery, this area had to be necessarily designed in this way to ensure a better view of the surrounding Sarovar dam for tourists. But turns out, the best view visitors probably got was of stagnating rainwater.

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