You can trust Prime Minister Narendra Modi to have the last laugh.
His navy-and-gold suit, monogrammed with his own name, which he wore to official functions during the visit of US President Barack Obama, had raised hackles.
Rahul Gandhi had gone hammer and tongs at him for his “megalomania”.
The congress leader got stuck into Modi during the campaign for the Delhi elections saying, “He (the PM) wears a Rs 10 lakh suit. Newspapers report that this is not Make in India. It is Make in UK. And then he tells you about Make in India and employment”.
Image source: IANS
Jairam Ramesh, former Union Minister from the Congress was even more acerbic. “Totally insane…This reflects megalomania nothing else,” he thundered.
Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha was not one to be left behind. “It is…shockingly narcissistic, (by) the self-proclaimed master of hype.”
Now, it seems Modi has turned the tables on them.
The prime minister handed over the suit to be auctioned to the highest bidder to the Surat administration in Gujarat.
Image courtesy: http://pmindia.gov.in/
The suit has now being auctioned for a mind-boggling Rs 4.31 crore to a diamond merchant Hitesh Laljibhai Patel. He had earlier made an offer of Rs. 3.61 crore.
Earlier, within the first day of the three-day auction on Wednesday, Rajesh Juneja, a businessman, bid a whopping Rs 1.21 crore for the item. The monies will go towards the Ganga cleaning campaign, a flagship programme of the prime minister.
This was after a local BJP leader in Surat, Rajubhai Agarwal, had bid Rs 51 lakh for the prime mister’s attire, which was topped by Suresh Agrawal, a businessman dealing in textiles, with a Rs 1 crore call.
The auction also includes 450 other gifts that Modi received since taking over as the prime minister about 10 months back.
This is not the first time that the prime minister is taking the auction route to raise money for critical public campaigns.
When he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi had made it a tradition to auction his gifts for charity. During his tenure he is known to have given away some 18,000 items and the proceeds went into a scheme for educating the girl child.
The auctions are known to have garnered over Rs 90 crore.
