Bharuch: 12:21 pm: Narendra Modi hit out at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alleging the Centre was not allowing the completion of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. "I want to tell the PM that Rajasthan and Guajrat wants water, Madhya Pradesh wants electricity. I don't want credit, please do this for our farmers, give permission to finish the dam," Modi said.
12:05 pm: Narendra Modi backed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for saying Sardar Patel was truly secular. But he took a dig at Singh for calling Sardar Patel a Congressman.
"I met the PM. He said something very rightly, I am proud of it. I respect the PM for saying that Sardar Patel was a truly secular. We need the Patel kind of secularism and not vote bank politics," Modi said.
"We built Mahatma's temple and memorial. Nobody challenged us that Modi you are from BJP why are you building Gandhi who was from Congress. But now they point out why is Modi honouring Patel who is from Congress," Modi added.
11:58 am: "Sardar Sarovar Dam was Patel's dream. He was from Gujarat. The world will be made to look at India when this statue will stand tall," Narendra Modi said.
11:52 am: Modi said India is still burdened with slavery. "We are still burdened with slavery, we will have to struggle and stand strong against the rest of the world. We are still following British traditions," he said. "We need to position India globally," Modi added.
11:46 am: Narendra Modi assured the protesting tribals that Narmada water will reach them. "My tribal brothers have a right over Naramada water. I promise them they will get the water. We will complete the irrigation work in this area very soon," Modi said.
11:36 am: LK Advani congratulated Narendra Modi for the Sardar Patel statue and for his PM candidature. "People go to the US to see the Statue of Liberty, but if they get to know that Modi in Gujarat has constructed a 'Statue of Unity', how proud we will be to see such a tall structure of Patel. I congratulate Modi whom the BJP has declared as PM's nominee, I am very happy and I want to express it here," Advani said.
11:20 pm: Speaking about Sardar Patel, Advani said, "If Sardar Patel was not in the leadership of India during those days, India would have been divided into two parts but many parts."
11:17 am: Speaking at the event, LK Advani said, "The independence struggle was not just under Gandhiji, Sardar Patel and other Congress leaders but many other freedom fighters. Chandrashekhar and Bhagat Singh were also a part of the freedom struggle. Everyone was honest and devoted towards the freedom struggle, only their ways were different."
11:02 am: BJP Prime Ministerial candidate and party patriarch LK Advani have reached the venue of the foundation laying ceremony of the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel statue in Kevadia. Modi is set to lay the foundation stone of the statue at 12.49 pm.
With hours to go before Modi lays the foundation stone for the Sardar Patel statue, the Gujarat Police has foiled a protest at the site. The protestors are primarily villagers from 66 tribal dominated villages located near the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
They had planned to protest during the foundation laying ceremony. The co-ordinator of the protest, Rohit Prajapati, is now claiming that he is being kept under house arrest.
Meanwhile, amidst all the controversies and politics, Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel's statue in Bharuch in Gujarat on Thursday. The proposed structure will be 597-feet tall and will directly face the Narmada Dam.
The political war between the BJP and the Congress over Sardar Patel's legacy intensified after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Modi virtually sparred on stage with Modi saying Patel should have been the first Prime Minister, an obvious dig at Jawaharlal Nehru.
The Prime Minister hit back at Modi by saying Patel was secular and he and Nehru had deep mutual respect. Singh mentioned that Patel was a Congressman who stood for secularism.
The Congress has slammed Modi of trying to appropriate Sardar Patel's legacy while the BJP on the other hand has accused the Congress of ignoring Patel's legacy and promoting the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
The politics on Sardar Patel reached another flashpoint on Wednesday when Human Resource Development Minister Shashi Tharoor said that he wished the Gujarat Chief Minister had learnt how Sardar Patel handled the 1947 riots.
Speaking to CNN-IBN, Tharoor said, "The problem is that Patel of 1947 and Modi of 2002 are different. I give an example, we know what happened in 2002. While orchestrating it, I do not say that but they allowed it to happen. Patel personally ensured that thousands of Muslims were moved to the Red Fort during the communal violence of 1947. Now are all these equivalent to the conduct of the Gujarat Chief Minister in 2002?"
"Modi tried to use Gandhiji and now Patel. But to try to appropriate legacy of a giant like Patel is not appropriate. He had a lot of differences with Nehru but they were public," Tharoor added.
The proposed statue will be 182 metre tall and will be the tallest in the world. The total height from the base will be 240 metre, which includes base level of 58 metre. It will be double the size of 'Statue of Liberty'. The 'Spring Temple Buddha' statue in China is the closest rival at a height of 153 metre.
The project is set to be completed in two phases and the first phase is estimated to cost around Rs 2,000 crore. The statue will have steel framing, reinforced cement concrete and bronze coating.
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