Vadodara residents driving on OP Road were in for a surprise on Wednesday morning when the popular sculpture of Rockstar with a guitar was not in its usual spot at the Diwalipura junction. The sculpture, made of scrap metal and installed in 2017, was moved to the Harni Sculpture Park to make way for a city foundation to beautify the circle on the theme of yoga.
According to officials from the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), the sculpture was removed from the site and moved to the sculpture in the middle of Wednesday night to make way for a new “beautification” of the crossing. The officials added that VMC had accepted a proposal from a city foundation to renovate the circle.
The Rockstar Circle was one of many scrap metal sculptures installed in the city in 2017. The installation’s change came just a month after Maharaja Sayajirao University Chancellor Shubhanginiraje Gaekwad criticized the metal sculptures in the “Reimaging Vadodara” symposium on May 1, hosted by Balkrishna Shukla, Gujarat Government Whip Chief and Raopura MLA. In his speech, Gaekwad called the scrap metal statues “unsightly” and said that VMC had “removed the beautiful installations that represented Vadodara and replaced them with scrap metal that is neither attractive nor aesthetic.”