'Shivaji memorial project to take off by end of December'.

The ground-breaking ceremony for the Shivaji Memorial project off Mumbai coast will take place in the last week of December and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will initiate work on the project, MLC Vinayak Mete has said. Mete, who is chairman of the committee appointed to pursue the issues related to the memorial, was speaking to FPJ during a visit to the site of the memorial recently.

The project, that includes a 192-metre statue of the Maratha warrior, a museum, a theatre and an art gallery, will come up on a hard rock in the Arabian sea about 1.2 km from Raj Bhavan and 3 km from Nariman Point.

The rocky island is about 16 hectares in area and suitably located so as to avoid issues such as high tension electric cables and Navy line, which were major issues of contention with regard to the earlier location, Mete said.

The project would need experts from several fields right from architecture and landscaping to sculptures and skyscrapers. There are at least 20 such fields have been identified and a separate group of officials has been pursuing consortiums of companies in this regard, Mete said.

'Five consortiums have responded to our call for appointing Project Management Consultants (PMC) for the project. They are Tata Consulting Engineers, Responsive, Aziz Design Associates, Sunil Patil and Associates, and Fairwood,' Mete said, adding that the decision over finalisation of PMCs for the government’s ambitious project is expected to be made within a week’s time and tenders for the designs would be floated soon.

'I've been following up the issue for over 15 years. I should be grateful to chief ministers such as Vilasrao Deshmukh for giving impetus to the idea. However, real credit would go to CM Devendra Fadnavis for his continuous follow-up of several issues related to the project which has brought it to the current status,' Mete said.

According to estimates, the memorial would be complete within three years after the work is started, he added. “We expect to conduct the ground-breaking ceremony in the last week of December after the winter session of the assembly, Mete said.

The Congress-NCP alliance, which was ruling the state before the BJP wrested power last year, had announced the creation of the tallest statue in the world of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. It was one of its poll planks for the 2009 Assembly elections as well as the 2014 Assembly polls.

However, the project had not taken off. Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar, after taking charge, had given necessary environmental clearances for the project.

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