Statues to boat replica: Gifts for PM Modi go under the hammer

Among the 50 items auctioned in the first hour, 10 had the Prime Minister’s picture and four of the 12th century Lingayat philosopher and social reformer Basaveshwara — presented to him by members of BJP Karnataka unit. The remaining were knick-knacks, like a wooden bullock cart, a metallic lotus, and a wall clock with all 12 postures of Surya Namaskar.

Well into the first hour, Jyoti Verma, an engineer in her twenties, was the highest bidder at Rs 15,000. It was for a replica of a boat given to Modi by BJP Gujarat chief Jitubhai Vaghani. The starting bid was Rs 2,000. Verma hesitated momentarily as the numbers rose, but kept flicking her white paddle up at the auctioneer. “Thoda zyada hogaya tha,” she said later. “Lekin this is a birthday gift for my bhai. He is in merchant navy.”

Verma works at National Mission for Clean Ganga, towards which proceeds of the two-day live auction and the subsequent e-auction that will run to the end of the week will go. There were 1,800 items on display at NGMA since October 2018, among them jackets, pagdis, bows and arrows, poems, paintings, a wooden cycle, mugs and congratulatory messages on surgical strikes from the Smiling Group in the Mumbai suburb of Chembur. The NGMA later said a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, priced at Rs 1000, sold for Rs 22,000.

“Our PM is like a sadhu, he doesn’t want anything,” NGMA Director-General Adwaita Charan Garanayak told The Indian Express. “This exhibition was initially to allow the public a peek into what kind of gifts the Prime Minister gets. Then, after consulting with ministers, we decided to auction the gifts.”
Why choose the Ganga as a cause to donate to? “The Prime Minister when he was elected planned a lot of things around the Ganga. The river is in such a state that everyone can help,” he said.

Garanayak’s favourite was a large painting – oil on canvas – by artist Bijay Biswaal, depicting Modi walking down a rain-soaked railway station.
The starting bid for the painting, titled “Wet Platform Golden Era”, was set at Rs 5000. Manish Chandra, who was at the auction to try his luck, said, “I follow the artist on Twitter and I am very fond of his work.” Chandra works for Indian Air Force as a fighter controller. “If you have seen Uri with the scene in which helicopters were detected, I do that job of detecting…” he smiled.

As the bidding continued inside, the crowd outside milled about looking at the hats on the wall, the photographs and artwork that were at some point handed over to Modi, then spent some time in the government treasury, Toshakhana, and now hang on walls of the gallery.

Inside, Verma asked, looking at a fish-shaped souvenir stuck inside a glass box, “Who will even buy this?” It sold for Rs 3200.