Thackeray govt approves proposal to raise proposed statue of BR Ambedkar by 100 feet

The Maharashtra cabinet on Wednesday gave a nod to the proposal to raise by 100 feet the height of a proposed statue of the 'Father of the Constitution' BR Ambedkar, at the Indu Mills compound here.

The decision was taken in a meeting presided by Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

Earlier, the proposed height for the statues was 250 feet but the Cabinet decided that the height should be 350 feet. The height of the pedestal will be 100 feet, thus, the total height of the statue will be 450 m from the ground. The upcoming memorial will cost a total of Rs 1100 crore.

The statue will be located close to Bharat Ratna Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's memorial site Chaityabhoomi.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said that our goal is to construct the Babasaheb memorial within two years (2022). "We do not need to do politics on what the previous government did and did not do. Now we have to move forward. The previous government had said that it would build the statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar, but only did 'Bhoomi Pujan'."

NCP leader Pawar inspected the site for the proposed statue at Indu Mill on January 2 and informed Thackeray about it.

Following the decision, the burden of the expenditure required to construct the statue has been increased by more than 300 crore as the previous government had kept its height low and the construction cost was Rs 700 crore.

( With inputs from ANI )