• The State Cabinet, chaired by then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi in 1975, cleared the proposal to build the 33- foot granite statue atop Minor Rock, west of the imposing Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanniyakumari.
• It was Eknath Ranade who, as the president of the Vivekananda Kendra, had represented to the State government over the Thiruvalluvar statue.
• on January 31, 1976, Karunanidhi’s first tenure (since 1969) ended with the imposition of the President’s rule in the State.
• It was left to Karunanidhi’s successor and bête noire, M.G. Ramachandran, to revive the project.
• On April 15, 1979, the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who laid the foundation stone for the project, wished that the statue had been erected earlier. Even at that time, the idea of building a bridge connecting the Vivekananda Rock and the proposed Thiruvalluvar statue rock was mooted.
• Both Desai and Ramachandran lost power in a gap of seven months.
• The project had to wait 11 years before Karunanidhi’s second tenure (1989-91).
• The height of the statue was further increased to 133 ft, symbolising the 133 chapters of the Thirukkural.
• Ganapati Stapathi had been functioning as the point person of the project, the cost of which was eventually assessed to be about ₹6 crore. The life-size bronze statue, measuring 95 ft and weighing 6,800 tonnes, was placed on a 38-ft-high pedestal (Adhara Peedam), on October 19, 1999. Karunanidhi unveiled it on January 1, 2000.

Valluvar kottam

• At the time, the DMK regime’s pet project of Valluvar Kottam in Nungambakkam — a ₹99 lakh-monument for the Tamil bard in Chennai — was nearing completion.
• Sculptor S.K. Achar, who had already designed the Rock Memorial, was engaged with the Kottam work, which was inaugurated by Karunanidhi in September 1974.
• The architectural pattern of the 101- ft-high Kottam was modelled on the lines of the 96-ft-tall temple car (popularly called Aazhi Ther) of Thyagarajaswamy temple, Tiruvarur.
• However, on January 31, 1976, Karunanidhi’s first tenure (since 1969) ended with the imposition of the President’s rule in the State and the dissolution of the Assembly. On April 15, 1976, the then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declared to open the Kottam.