The 108-foot multi-metal statue of Adi Guru Shankaracharya, known as the ‘Statue of Oneness’, installed at Ekatma Dham in the sacred town of Omkareshwar, is fully safe, structurally sound and exceptionally robust. Established in 2023 by the Acharya Shankar Cultural Unity Trust under the Department of Culture, the monument stands as an outstanding example of advanced engineering and adherence to the highest international safety standards. Its design, construction and structural safety assessment were carried out with the expertise of some of the world’s most reputed engineering and technical institutions.
Chief Engineer and Project Director of Ekatma Dham, Shri Rajeev Srivastava, said that the construction of the historic Statue of Oneness was executed by the Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation (MPSTDC) through Larsen & Toubro (L&T), India’s leading engineering and construction company that successfully built the world’s tallest statue, the Statue of Unity. The statue’s bronze casting was executed by JTQ, the company that also executed the bronze casting of the Statue of Unity. Meinhardt Singapore, an internationally acclaimed engineering consultancy with extensive experience in managing large-scale infrastructure projects, served as the Project Management Consultant. The design consultancy was provided by the renowned architectural firm CP Kukreja Architects, which has designed landmark public buildings such as Yashobhoomi, Bharat Mandapam, and the Vallabh Bhavan Annexe.
To ensure the monument’s long-term structural stability, detailed technical consultations were undertaken with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and IIT Delhi. IIT Madras carried out the statue’s concrete mix design and advanced seismic analysis, while IIT Delhi’s technical assessment certified the monument’s design life at more than 500 years, underscoring its long-term structural durability.
Although Omkareshwar falls under Seismic Zone III, the statue’s structural calculations were carried out in accordance with the more stringent Seismic Zone IV standards to provide an additional margin of safety. The design successfully met these higher engineering benchmarks.
Further strengthening its safety credentials, the monument underwent an extensive wind tunnel analysis conducted by the globally renowned German wind engineering firm Werner Sobek AG. While the standard design wind speed for the Omkareshwar region is 140 km/h, the statue has been designed and validated to withstand wind speeds of up to 169 km/h, ensuring structural stability even under extreme weather conditions.
The monument’s structural integrity has also been verified through advanced analysis using the internationally recognised ETABS structural engineering software. Against the permissible stress ratio limit of 0.85, the structure recorded an actual stress ratio of just 0.40, demonstrating a significant margin of safety and confirming that it performs well within internationally accepted engineering standards.
According to technical experts and project officials, both the pedestal and the primary structural framework of the Statue of Oneness remain firmly stable along their designated axis. Built in full compliance with international engineering and safety standards, the monument is designed to remain a lasting symbol of reverence and inspiration for devotees and visitors from India and around the world for centuries to come.