The sculptor who had to become his own developer

The story told about Jatayu Earth's Center is that a sculptor spent about ten years building the world's largest bird. It is a good story and it is not what happened.

What the documented record shows is a man who spent roughly two decades persuading a government to let him build something, was required to become a property company in order to finish it, took money from around a hundred and fifty outside investors to do so, and then watched a tribunal order the park's daily takings into an escrow account.

Twenty years of asking

Rajiv Anchal — National Award-winning sculptor and filmmaker — first put the idea to Kerala's Department of Tourism in the 1980s. Nothing happened for over a decade.

The chronology the operator publishes on its own site picks up in 1999, when eco-tourism clearance came through and 65 acres of government land were signed over, making this Kerala's first BOT tourism project. In 2004 the land moved from the Revenue Department to Tourism, pushed by the then Chadayamangalam MLA Prayar Gopalakrishnan. In 2005 the Tourism Minister K. C. Venugopal inaugurated the project.

Then a detail that changes the shape of the whole thing: in 2006 an expert committee selected Anchal from a field of sculptors. He did not get the commission by being the man whose idea it was. Having spent twenty years arguing for the project, he then had to win it.

The turn

In 2009 the Tourism Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan inaugurated phase one. In 2010 the Eco-Tourism Department asked Government for permission to bring in private investors, and Government agreed.

In 2011 Anchal submitted the completion proposal — as Chairman and Managing Director of Guruchandrika Builders and Property Private Limited. In 2013 a thirty-year BOT lease handed operations to that company.

This is the part our own page used to get wrong, describing the project as developed "with Kerala's tourism department alongside a private operator" as though the sculptor and the concessionaire were different parties. They are the same person. To finish his sculpture, the artist became the developer.

The money

Phase one is put at around ₹100 crore. According to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal at Chennai, ₹25.58 crore was raised from about 150 investors, and the company took a ₹3 crore loan from the Chadayamangalam branch of Dhanlaxmi Bank which became a non-performing asset.

A figure of ₹40 crore, attached to a supposed 2021 suit by non-resident investors, circulates online. We traced it to an unreliable source and could not verify it, so we are not repeating it. The ₹25.58 crore comes from the tribunal record.

The escrow order

The investors brought an oppression-and-mismanagement petition under the Companies Act. The tribunal below ordered the park's daily gate collections — put at roughly ₹2.5 lakh a day — to be paid into an escrow account. Anchal's side appealed that freeze.

On 18 October 2022 the NCLAT at Chennai dismissed the appeal and upheld the escrow order, directing that the main petition be decided within four weeks.

By 2024 an Administrator had been appointed over the group, and the Kerala High Court was hearing three consolidated writ appeals about it, which were closed on 10 May 2024 without a ruling on the merits after the underlying application was withdrawn. The court papers name five separate companies: Guruchandrika Builders & Property, Jatayupara Tourism, Jatayupara Adventure Tourism, Jatayu Sculpture & Museum, and Unique Caves.

What a visitor sees today

The sculpture and the walkway opened in two phases — the adventure park on 5 December 2017, the bird itself in 2018, soft-inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on 4 July and given as 17 August by Wikipedia.

As of 15 August 2026 the operator's own site carries a banner: the Siddha Healing Caves, the museum and the 6D theatre are under construction, and the adventure activities are under maintenance. The sculpture, the cable car, the walkway, the viewpoint, the zip line, the heli-taxi and the glamping are running.

Notice which items those are. The closed ones map more or less onto the separately incorporated companies named in the court papers. We are stating that as an observed overlap of scope and not as a proven cause — we have no document connecting the two — but it is the kind of thing a visitor is entitled to notice while standing in front of a shut museum.