Mysuru-based sculptor to carve Bose's statue to be installed at India Gate

Mysuru-based sculptor Arun Yogiraj will carve the 30-feet statue of Subhas Chandra Bose which will be installed at India Gate under the grand canopy behind the erstwhile Amar Jawan Jyoti, sources said on Tuesday.

Yogiraj had also carved the 12-feet statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Kedarnath, which was unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.

Ahead of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 125th birth anniversary, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the freedom fighter’s statue will be installed at India Gate to honour his contribution to the independence movement.

The canopy, which was built along with the rest of the grand monument in the 1930s by Sir Edwin Lutyens, once housed a statue of the former king of England George V. The statue was later moved to Coronation Park in Central Delhi in the mid-1960s.

A large black jade granite stone has been selected and brought from Telangana for the statue to Delhi where the work will be done.

The design of the statue has been done by a team from the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) under the Ministry of Culture, headed by its Director-General, Adwaita Gadanayak.

Yogiraj, known for his portrait work will specifically carve the facial features of the statue when he arrives on June 1 in Delhi and the work is scheduled to be completed by August 15, culture ministry officials said.

The prime minister had earlier given his approval of Yogiraj’s version of the statue when he was presented with a two-feet replica last month. Modi had tweeted later about the meeting with Yogiraj with a picture of the model.

Apart from building the idol of Adi Shankaracharya installed at Kedarnath, Yogiraj’s other works include the famous 14.5-feet white marble stone sculpture of Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar in Mysuru and the life-size white marble sculpture of Swami Ramakrishna Parmahansa.