Gifts to Prime Minister to go under the hammer, base bid price ₹100

A pair of red boxing gloves with signatures of pugilists, a badminton racket bag with signatures of Thomas Cup players, an autographed t-shirt of the women’s hockey team. These are some of the items with the highest start-price for the auction that will go under the spanner. These are the mementos gifted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Last year, boxing gloves of bronze medalist Lovlina Boroghain touched ₹10 crore, starting from Rs 80 lakh. Javelins of Tokyo Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra and Paralympics gold medallist Sumit Antil started with a base price of ₹1 crore and went up to Rs 10 crore each. The Birmingham Commonwealth Games will have its imprint in this year’s e-auction, beginning September 17, the Prime Minister’s birthday. The boxing gloves to be auctioned this time were gifted to him by gold medalist boxer Nikhat Zareen after the Commonwealth Games.

The base bid price of the 1200 items that will be auctioned starts at Rs 100, for an image of Ganesh on paper to ₹5 lakh, which include dozen gifts in the sports section. “This display reflects the rich art and heritage of the country. We have works of unknown artists as well as recognised ones in the collection,” says Adwaita Charan Garanayak, director general of the National Gallery of Modern Art, where the gifts have been put on display.

The mementos include gifts from common people to chief ministers. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath gifted Modi a Ganesh sculpture as well as miniature models of the sports complex and Kanpur metro. Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur gave a Trishul, while Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gifted a statue of Rani Kamalapti, a Gond ruler. It was not just the BJP chief ministers who gave gifts to Modi. Former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi presented the Prime Minister a charkha with inlay work and Andhra Pradesh chief minister gave him a wall-hanging of the Tirupati deity Lord Venkateshwara.

Some of the other gifts include a large Madhubani painting depicting India’s journey through Covid, a graphite miniature of Mahatma Gandhi placed on the top of a pencil, miniatures of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, a Kashi Vishwanath temple model carved in wood, a Golden Temple sculpture plated in gold. There is also a Subhash Chandra Bose statue by Arun Yogiraj, the sculptor who led the team which carved Bose’s 28-feet stone statue installed at the India Gate.

“The buyers at the auctions are from all sections, including common people. Last time it started with ₹100. Over the past two years several sports items have been added to it,” says Garanayak.

This is the fourth auction since it began in 2019. The proceeds from the auctions are to go for the Namami Ganga project.

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Amita Shah