The Union Culture Ministry on Friday said the fourth edition of the e-auction of gifts given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi would start from Saturday, with around 1,200 mementos up for grabs.
During a briefing, Culture Minister G. Kishan Reddy said 1,222 gifts to Mr. Modi would be auctioned from Saturday, which is Mr. Modi’s birthday, till October 2. The proceeds of the auction would go towards the Namami Gange project as was the case for the previous auctions, he said. He said 1,805 items were auctioned in the first round in 2019 and 2,772 in the second round. In 2021, the third auction had 1,348 items, he said. Some of the selected mementos have been displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art here, while the list and base price of all of the mementos will be available on pmmementos.gov.in, which is also the site for the bidding.
“Mementos in the auction include exquisite paintings, sculptures, handicrafts and folk artefacts. Several of these are items customarily offered as gifts, such as traditional angavastrams, shawls, headgears, ceremonial swords. Other memorabilia of interest include the replicas and the models of the Shri Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and the Kashi-Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. We also have an exciting section of sports memorabilia,” he said.
“We also have an exciting section of sports memorabilia”G. Kishan ReddyCulture Minister
The sports equipment used by the Indian athletes at the Commonwealth Games 2022, the Deaflympics 2022 and the Thomas Cup Championship 2022 that were gifted to Mr. Modi would also be auctioned. Mr. Reddy said there would be 25 such sports items among the mementos. A model of the statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose recently installed at the India Gate that was gifted to Mr. Modi by Arun Yogiraj, an artist, would also be auctioned, he said.
Mr. Reddy said the norms for the bidders had been changed this time round, after some trouble in the past where the bidders could not pay the high prices they had entered earlier. The bidder’s manual on the e-auction site says all the users would have to register and carry out an Aadhaar authentication in order to participate.
In an RTI reply to The Hindu on May 20, the NGMA said the first three auctions of PM mementos had raised ₹22.5 crore by successfully auctioning 4,682 mementos out of 5,925 that were put up for auction.
