Thackeray memorial: CM to lay foundation stone for project today
Over four years after a national trust was set up for the memorial of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray will lay the foundation stone for the memorial on Wednesday evening
Over four years after a national trust was set up for the memorial of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray will lay the foundation stone for the memorial on Wednesday evening. The memorial will come up at the plot where the city mayor bungalow was located at Shivaji Park in Dadar.
The ceremony will be held on the occasion of Shiv Jayanti, which falls on March 31 as per the Hindu calendar (tithi), party insiders said. Sena leader and minister Subhash Desai, who is general secretary of the Balasaheb Thackeray National Memorial Trust, said that Thackeray will remain present at the venue of the ground-breaking ceremony in central Mumbai.
“We wanted to make it a big scale event but looking at the rising Covid-19 cases, we decided to keep the number of people limited. Uddhav ji will remain present. Ajit Pawar and Balasaheb Thorat, our MVA partners will also be present,” Desai said. Sena minister and president of the trust, Aaditya Thackeray, will not be present at the event as he is home quarantine. He is however expected to take part in the event virtually.
The project, this is being implemented by Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), is divided into two phases: the cost of phase 1 is ₹250 crore, while the second phase will cost ₹150 crore. The erstwhile mayor’s bungalow on the proposed memorial plot is a Grade II-B heritage structure, and will remain untouched during the project.
In the first phase, the architecture, aesthetics and construction of the building for the memorial will take place. Phase one will also include the construction of a parking lot for visitors and focus on the mechanism of rain water harvesting at the memorial. The second phase will consist of the technological part of the memorial. This will include preparation of digital mapping, films, audio visuals, etc, for the memorial to start its operations. Abha Narain Lambha Associates has designed the memorial.
The MMRDA will start work on the memorial immediately before monsoon, people close to the project said. The Shiv Sena intends to make the memorial functional before the tenth death anniversary of the Sena supremo, in November 2022.
The work on phase one of the project will be completed in 14 months.
