New Delhi, Nov. 24: A design of the National Dandi Memorial is ready, six years after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the plan.

It will be built at a cost of Rs 15 crore over 15 acres opposite Saifee Villa, the house at Dandi in Gujarat where Mahatma Gandhi stayed on the night of April 5, 1930, at the culmination of his march to protest the imposition of tax on salt.

The design has been drawn up with help of artists and experts from the country’s prominent design schools. IIT Bombay is the co-ordinator.

The Prime Minister had unveiled the plan in 2005, the 75th anniversary of the march.

The culture ministry constituted a Dandi Memorial Committee, initially headed by Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma and former Bengal governor. But he stepped down after Kumari Selja took charge as culture minister.

“As the new minister, it was her (Selja’s) privilege to reconstitute committees under her charge for which incumbent chairpersons making way was the right thing,” Gopal Krishna Gandhi told The Telegraph. Now his cousin Tushar is heading the panel.

Over the past few years, the panel’s members looked at a variety of models and even visited Rajiv Gandhi’s memorial at Sriperumbudur.

In the initial plan, the 81 satyagarahis who marched with Gandhi were to be represented by 81 rock pieces. The design also had a 61-foot high statue of the Mahatma but the Gandhians on the panel rejected the idea because it would cost Rs 100 crore and go against the Father of the Nation’s ideals of simplicity.

The final model approved does not have rocks but a cluster of full-size sculptures of the marchers. “The marchers’ sculptures will be created on the spot as part of a National Sculpture camp. The camp will be guided by craftsmen who work with terracotta and will be led by a team of sculptors and artists from art colleges across India,” a ministry official said.

According to the designers, the memorial has been conceived as an “experiential journey.” A pathway will be laid towards the main memorial with 24 spaces, representing the 24 halts along the march. Each space will have a panel carrying a visual depiction of the main events that occurred during the day’s journey to the halt.

The pathway will be built around the left bank of a small lake to be dug in the memorial complex. The lake will symbolically represent the sea by which the march had ended in Dandi.

The main memorial will have a statue of Gandhi, inside a pyramid of light, leading the protesters. The pyramid of light will have a salt crystal on top as a reminder of what triggered the march.

The hands of the Gandhi sculpture will be raised upwards, holding a handful of simulated salt crystals. At dusk, the pyramid of light will rise in the sky, illuminating the salt crystal at the apex.