Going once, going twice, sold! Mementos gifted to Modi auctioned

About 1,800 mementos gifted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2014 were auctioned at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi on Sunday.

A painting of Modi at a railway station holding a bag with a reserve price of Rs 50,000, and a wooden bike with a base price of Rs 40,000 were sold at Rs 5 lakh each, becoming the highest bids during the two-day physical auction, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said.

The funds raised through the auction, held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, will go to the government’s flagship project ‘Namami Gange’, a Central government project to clean the Ganga river.

A dedicated site -- http://pmmementos.gov.in -- has been set up to display and e-auction the mementos that are priced between Rs 100 and Rs 30,000.

The last day of the physical auction was on Monday, during which 270 of the the 1,900 items were sold, while e-auction of the remaining gifts will begin on the portal on Tuesday and will continue till January 31, he said.

The auction includes statues, photographs, paintings and articles such as angavastram, shawls, commemorative coins, traditional musical instruments, hats, pagris and jackets, etc.

A photo frame of Ashtamangalam with base price of Rs 1,500 was sold for Rs 28,000 while a metallic sword was sold for Rs 1 lakh against its base price of Rs 5,000.

Also the statue of Mahatma Basaveshwara was auctioned at Rs 70,000 against its base price of Rs 10,000.

Take a look at some of the mementos on the auction block.