On the second day of bidding for Narendra Modi’s gift articles he received as the Prime Minister, a Bhavnagar-based diamond merchant made a bid of whopping Rs1.48 crore for PM Modi’s monogrammed pinstripe suit on Thursday.
Diamond merchant Mukesh Patel surpassed Wednesday’s bid of Surat based textile merchant Rajesh Juneja, who made a bid of Rs1.21 crore. Before Patel, a bid worth Rs1.39 crore also came from a Surat based trader. As one more day remained for bidding, it has been expected that more amount would be offer on the last day of auction on Friday.
The PM wore the pin stripe suit during the breakfast meeting with US President Barack Hussein Obama at Hyderabad House during his visit in January. Apart from Modi’s suit, over 450 other gift items including a yellow T-shirt of Austrian Cricket team gifted by fast bowler Brett lee during Modi’s visit to Australia has also been kept at Science Centre in Surat for auction. “Brett lee’s T-shirt has been displayed just besides the pin-stripe suit. However it did not find many bidders,” said a member of auction committee adding that the Australian pacer’s T-shirt has been quoted for Rs2000.
Patel, who bid Rs1.41 crore for Modi suit said that he would like to buy Modi suit as following media attention, that particular gift item has become the most prestigious to purchase. Many youngsters have shown interest to buy lee’s yellow T-shirt but they quoted a very low price compared to the suit.
Though 361 gift article of Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel have also been displayed at the same venue, but all the attention have been drawn on Modi-suit. An NRI Ramesh Virani had gifted pinstripe suit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Vibrant Gujarat-2015 in Gandhinagar. According to sources, Virani had gifted the suit along with an invitation of his son’s wedding. The PM wore the suit exactly on the same day of the wedding ceremony, although he couldn’t attend it.