24.6.08

Mayawati's dream Buddha Statue gets delayed

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's dream project of building the tallest Buddha statue in the world at 152 metres - taller than the Bamian Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan - has run into rough weather.The execution of the plan has slowed down thanks to massive protests by farmers in Kushinagar town, where the project is to come up on a sprawling 750-acre plot. It is located around 330 km from Lucknow, on the border with Nepal, where the Buddha died, or attained Nirvana, 2,500 years ago.
The proposed 152.4 m bronze statue would sit atop a 17-storey building. It would be higher than the world's tallest Buddha statue of 67 metres in China's Sichuan province. The ones destroyed by the Taliban were 52 m and 34 m tall.The building on which the Buddha would sit will have another 12 m statue, besides prayer halls and terraced gardens. The campus would also have a museum, an art gallery, a university for the study of philosophy, a women's college, a hospital and a hotel.
The $222-million project is being implemented by a global private organisation called Maitreyi, which has set up a trust in Gorakhpur, about 50 km from here.
The state government is acquiring the land from the farmers and would lease it out to the Maitreyi Trust free of cost.
Officials said that 660 acres of land belonging to about 3,000 farmers of seven villages was being acquired for the project, while the rest 90 acres belongs to the government.

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