SARDAR SAROVAR DAM, India — India inaugurated the world’s tallest statue on Wednesday with fireworks, folk dances and floral tributes, deploying tight security amid an outcry by local groups over the soaring cost of the 182-meter sculpture of an independence hero. Posters of Modi with Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani were torn down or had their faces blackened at the weekend. The statue is more than twice the size of New York’s Statue of Liberty and also dwarfs the 128-meter high Spring Temple Buddha in China, the world’s next-biggest statue. 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. 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.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer October 31, 2018 10:49 UTC