Berhampur: Students of the government-run ITI here have built a six-foot-high statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose using automobile scraps after making one of Mahatma Gandhi.
The 1.5-tonne statue was installed at the campus of the institute Monday, the 126th birth anniversary of the nationalist leader, as a tribute to him.
Electric fan bearings, motorcycle chains, nuts and bolts, gears, iron rods and other scrap materials were used to make the statue, The ITI principal Rajat Kumar Panigrahi said.
“The students collected the scraps used for making the statue from electric workshops and automobile garages free of cost … Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for creating wealth out of waste. Our institute has utilised waste and discarded materials to make different statues which dot the campus,” he said.
There were two purposes in choosing scrap – promoting cleanliness and developing the innovative talents of students, the principal said. Around 30 students of the fitter, welder, painter and some other wings of the institute along with some faculty members took about 15 days to build the statue under his guidance, he said.
The statue will be kept in a glass box, Panigrahi said.
On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti last year the institute’s students built a six-foot-high statue of Mahatma Gandhi using automobile scrap. It won the first prize in the ‘Trash to Treasure’ section at the National Competition on Welded Marvels – 2022.
A replica of a fish also made of scraps by them bagged the second prize in the same competition, the principal said.
The prizes were given away at a function in Chennai organised by the Indian Institute of Welding (IIW) last week in association with the Association of Welding Products Manufacturers. The two works will be displayed at the IIW, he added.
PTI
