Why Does PM Modi Auction His Personal Gifts? Inside the Tradition

Somewhere in India right now, someone owns a piece of ceremonial art, a sports memento, or a handcrafted temple model that was once handed personally to the Prime Minister of India. They bought it. And the money didn’t go to Modi.

Since 2015, PM Modi has periodically put mementos and gifts he’s received in his official capacity up for public e-auction, with the proceeds directed toward public causes rather than kept as personal property. Here’s how that tradition actually works.

Where the Practice Started

The habit predates his time as Prime Minister. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi auctioned off gifts he’d received in that role, with proceeds going to the Kanya Kelavani Fund, a state initiative supporting girls’ education. Reports place the total raised from that CM-era practice at close to Rs 90 crore over the years.

After becoming Prime Minister, he began a similar practice starting in 2015, this time with proceeds directed to the Namami Gange Mission, the government’s flagship programme for cleaning and conserving the Ganga river. Early rounds of this PM-era auction raised over Rs 8 crore for that cause.

How the E-Auctions Work Today

The mementos auction has since become a recurring event, typically opened to public bidding through a dedicated portal. The most recent editions have covered items received at major events and from visiting dignitaries: sports memorabilia connected to events like the Paralympic Games, temple models including replicas of the Shri Ram Mandir and Shree Dwarkadhish temple, and regional art forms such as Pichwai, Gond, and Madhubani paintings, alongside ceremonial shawls and swords.

By the time of the sixth edition of this specific auction series, which ran from September 17 to October 2, 2024, and covered over 600 items, the cumulative total raised across the first five editions since January 2019 had crossed Rs 50 crore, all channelled to the Namami Gange project.

A later, smaller-scale auction connected to his 75th birthday in 2025 raised a further Rs 1.89 crore, according to figures shared by the Culture Ministry.

Why This Matters Beyond the Money

Heads of government worldwide receive large numbers of gifts as a matter of protocol, and most countries have rules governing what officials can keep versus what must be surrendered to the state. India’s specific approach, publicly auctioning these items and directing the proceeds to named public causes, is somewhat unusual in how visible and repeated it is.

It also generates a modest but real revenue stream for causes like river conservation that otherwise depend on general budget allocation. Rs 50-plus crore over five years is not a huge sum next to the overall Namami Gange budget, which runs into thousands of crores, but it is money that exists specifically because of this practice, rather than being reallocated from elsewhere.

How Other Countries Handle Official Gifts

India’s public auction approach isn’t the only model. In the United States, federal law under the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act generally bars a president from personally keeping a gift from a foreign government above a modest value threshold, currently a few hundred dollars, adjusted periodically for inflation. Anything above that becomes US government property, typically catalogued by the National Archives and eventually displayed at a presidential library, rather than sold at public auction the way Modi’s mementos are.

Seen against that backdrop, India’s approach stands out for two reasons: it converts official gifts into cash for a public cause rather than archival storage, and it lets ordinary citizens actually own a piece of that history by winning the bid, rather than keeping items behind glass in a government collection.

How to Actually Bid

For readers curious rather than just informed: registration for these auctions has run through a dedicated government portal, pmmementos.gov.in, where each edition lists items with photographs, descriptions, and a starting bid. Anyone can register and place a bid, and winning items are shipped to the buyer after payment, with the full proceeds going to the designated cause for that edition rather than to general government revenue. It’s a rare example of a government asset sale that ordinary citizens can take part in directly, rather than one restricted to institutional buyers.

Bottom Line

The mementos auction has run in some form since Modi’s time as Gujarat Chief Minister, shifting focus over the years from girls’ education funding to Ganga conservation once he became Prime Minister. Over roughly a decade combined across both roles, it has channelled well over Rs 100 crore in gifted items into public causes rather than private collections, a detail that gets far less attention than the auction items themselves.

FAQ

Abhyudaya Verma