Andhra's 'My brick, My Amaravati' creates Guinness world record

After hosting a grand reception for its new capital, Amaravati on October 22, the Andhra Pradesh government has now achieved a Guinness World Record for its ‘My brick, My Amaravati' initiative on Wednesday, TDP leaders claim.

The record is supposedly for the largest number of online donations in 24 hours.

“We achieved the feat on Tuesday by registering donations by 1,43,740 individuals who purchased the e-brick from across Andhra Pradesh. It was not easy to mobilise such large-scale online buying. We enrolled 500 volunteers to help the donors make online purchase of the e-bricks. There was this constant fear of websites crashing due to excess traffic, the payment gateway may stop functioning. But finally, we made it and informed the Chief Minister that we have a splendid Diwali gift for him,” K. Pattabhiram, member of the State TDP committee who monitored the campaign told The Hindu.

The program was launched earlier on October 15 by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu wherein people could buy 'e-bricks' for the capital for 10 rupees each 

For the record, TDP leaders ran a 10-day campaign requesting people across the state to participate in the attempt and donate during the 24-hour window. A separate website was also set up for the record.

Reportedly, the campaign needed 1.05 lakh bricks to be sold to achieve the world record, which was held by a Chinese NGO.

People from 75 countries have donated to the cause for Amravati’s construction via the campaign.

An ET article reported that three lakh ‘e-bricks’ were bought by NRIs in the US on a single day following IT minister Palle Raghunatha Reddy’s visit to the country seeking investments.

According to the official website, the campaign has collected a total of Rs 43,93,015 at the time of writing.

Previously, `My soil, my water, my Amaravati' by the chief minister also received a healthy response with soil and water from 16,000 localities being collected across the state by the citizens.

Representatives of the Guinness Book of World Records are expected to present the certificate in the next 10 days.