A partly sculpted giant blue granite boulder quarried from a hill in Korakottai village in Tiruvannamalai district in Tamil Nadu is at the centre of a raging controversy as it makes its way to Bengaluru, where it is to be erected as a monolithic sculpture of the Hindu deity Vishnu.
The transportation operation is being carried out by the Bengaluru-based Kothandarama Swamy Devasthanam Trust, which had quarried boulders from a hill for “sculpting and erecting”’ a gigantic idol of Vishnu in his “Vishwaroopam” form on its temple premises. The quarried units, one measuring 64 feet x 25 feet x 7 feet meant for the main idol and another 22 feet x 36 feet x 7 feet for the idol’s serpent hood, began their journey on a long and sturdy “one and half multi-axle” vehicle of 240 wheels in the first week of December last year and have made slow and halting progress through villages and State roads.
Informed sources said many bridges and culverts had to be strengthened and roads had to be widened to accommodate the Over Dimensional Consignment (ODC) of boulders. As a result the vehicle covered just 5 to 7 kilometres a day. At a few places the road was so narrow that the transporters had to convince local residents to demolish parts of their houses and shops for free movement of the vehicle. The consignment has covered about 60 kilometres so far, having had to encounter a plethora of technical snags and practical problems, besides pockets of resistance.
The vehicle with its massive consignment was stuck on the roadside on the outskirts of Gingee near Tiruvannamalai for almost a week after the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which maintains the historic Gingee Fort, denied it permission to use the road that cuts through the outer wall of the fort. A source in the ASI claimed that a portion of the wall was found demolished several decades ago, and today the State highway between Tiruvannamalai and Villupuram towns cuts through the wall.
“This road could not be allowed to be used for this overdimensional consignment since we feared that it would damage the fort’s outer defence wall,” the source said. Hence the transporters decided to skip Gingee town and, after seeking permission from the Tiruvannamalai district administration, re-routed the vehicle on January 9 to Chengam via Tiruvannamalai, hoping to eventually get on to the National Highway. “To make the way for it, the authorities have even demolished medians in the road in Tiruvannamalai town,” said Ayyappan, a local journalist.
P. Rathinam, a senior advocate and social activist, told Frontline that when his team of lawyers visited the villages through which the consignment had passed in Tiruvannamalai and Villupuram districts, they could see damaged front portions of a few shops and houses. He said that the consignment was so massive that it could not cross the narrow carriageway. “We saw damaged shops in Vellimedupettai and other villages. One house, identified as belonging to Kuberan, was demolished to make way for the lorry,” he added.
Rathinam claimed that no official from the district administration had come to the rescue of the affected people. “The entire exercise of quarrying and transporting such a huge consignment should be stopped immediately. Negotiations for damage caused by the vehicle have been left to local political functionaries. And the compensation amounts the trust gave to the families were meagre,” he said.
Sources belonging to the charitable trust, however, denied the charges and claimed that they had sought the necessary permission from the relevant departments to quarry and transport the boulders. They said the blue metal without a crack for making the giant idol could be found only in Tiruvannamalai district. The sources also added that permission was obtained from the relevant departments to quarry and transport the materials. They cited an example in which a huge statue of a goddess was sculpted and installed in a Tamil Nadu pilgrim town after stone was quarried from a hill.
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