Statue of Unity: What the Sardar Patel statue will look like when ready

The Time magazine in 1947 called him 'The Boss' who unified over 562 disparate princely states. Many had hailed him as India's Bismarck. The visage of the country's first deputy PM, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was fondly called the 'Iron man of India,' now stands clad in bronze in the shape of the world's tallest statue (182 metres, twice the height of the Statue of Liberty) built at a project cost of Rs 2,979 crore on Sadhu Beyt.

The breathtaking Statue Of Unity is set against the glistening basalt rocks of the Vindhya and Satpura hills of the Shoolpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary. The statue, befitting Sardar's stature, is set to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 31, Sardar's birth anniversary, with BJP setting the ball rolling for its 2019 Lok Sabha poll campaigns.

In 2010, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was the chief minister of Gujarat he had revealed his plans for building the Statue of Unity. Modi had said then, "It is a tribute to the great man who united India. The state government and my party (BJP) have decided to build the world's tallest statue dedicated to Sardar Patel."

BJP's massive campaign went on to associate Modi with Sardar's political style, and his emphasis on 'good governance'. Right from the Gaurav Yatra days of 2002, Modi would often be referred to as 'Chhote Sardar'.

Initially, the Statue of Unity was planned to mark Modi's decade-long stint as Gujarat chief minister in the run-up to the 2012 state elections. But soon, Sardar's statue extrapolated to becoming the uniting point for BJP's 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaigning, when large rallies and marathons like the 'Run for Unity' were organized by the BJP.

The Statue of Unity is ambitious both in its scale and its design. The soaring structure will be complemented by an integrated complex housing a hotel, a memorial garden and a visitor centre, 3.5km away from the Sardar Sarovar Dam. It required complicated engineering, and a composite reinforcement to support the huge structure on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the Narmada river bed.

The project website says that nearly 3 lakh soil samples were collected, along with 700 tonnes of iron in the form of donated farm equipment from across the country. And now the Statue of Unity's completion will serve as the bugle for the BJP machinery to mobilize the masses with the message of national unity, and prime them for 2019.

Political science expert Dinesh Shukla says, "Modi used the Statue of Unity to rally support for his 2014 Lok Sabha campaign, and on the project's completion, he will try to use it to mobilize masses for 2019." He adds, "The statue may help the BJP to an extent when it comes to Lok Sabha seats of Gujarat."