Pritish Nandy Tweets A Photo of ‘Statue of Unity’. Only, It Isn’t!
A reverse image search showed that the photo shared by Nandy as the Statue of Unity is actually from 2008.
CLAIM
On 8 December, senior journalist and former Rajya Sabha MP Pritish Nandy tweeted a photo of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and a photo of Patel’s statue, claiming the latter to be the Statue of Unity.
Nandy, in his tweet, remarked that the statue bore no resemblance to Patel at all.
Nandy’s tweet had received close to 1k retweets and 3.1k likes at the time of writing this article.
The photo has earlier been shared on Facebook in groups opposed to the BJP, claiming that Rs 3,000 crore had been wasted on making a statue that looked like the “Chinese chairman Mao” instead of Sardar Patel.
Several individuals, too, have shared this photo with a similar narrative.
TRUE OR FALSE?
For starters, this is not what Sardar Patel’s face looks like, in the Statue of Unity.
Below is a picture of the Statue of Unity, clicked by Reuters photojournalist Amit Dave.
Secondly, a reverse image search showed that the photo shared by Nandy as the Statue of Unity is actually another statue of Sardar Patel from 2008.
The photo is from Getty images, dated 31 October 2008. The larger version of the photo shows late sculptor Jashuben Shilpi giving the final touches to the statue, incidentally also made of bronze, in her workshop near Gandhinagar.
WHAT IS THE STATUE OF UNITY?
The Statue of Unity is a 182-metre tall structure of former Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, sculpted by Ram V Sutar. The statue, located on the Narmada riverfront in Gujarat, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 31 October 2018. The statue was and continues to be a subject of contention for the Opposition, with its cost at a whopping Rs 3,000 crores.
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