Nearly 1,500 gifts received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi are being auctioned in the eighth PM Mementos e-auction, launched on his 76th birthday. The Ministry of Culture has listed 50 “hero objects,” led by a silver Lord Ram from Karnataka, with proceeds directed to the Namami Gange Programme for Ganga rejuvenation and conservation, continuing a fundraising drive that began in 2019.
Every year since 2019, the mementos and gifts Prime Minister Narendra Modi receives on his travels and public engagements have not stayed in storage. They have gone up for auction, and the eighth edition of that exercise—the PM Mementos e-auction—launched on September 17, coinciding with the Prime Minister's 76th birthday, and remains live on www.pmmementos.gov.in. This year's collection runs to 1,498 items, up from the 1,300-plus gifts listed in last year's seventh edition, and the proceeds will once again be routed to the Namami Gange Programme, the Centre's flagship initiative for the rejuvenation and conservation of the Ganga.
The Ministry of Culture, which runs the auction, has designated 50 items as "hero objects" this year—the highest-value, most collectible pieces in the set—and the collection as a whole draws heavily from West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Assam, Bihar, and Odisha, giving it a distinctly pan-Indian spread across painting, sculpture, sport, and craft. Before the online bidding opened, the full set was exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, where the National Informatics Centre, the State Bank of India, and a designated Fine Art Handling Agency have all been roped in for the technical, payment, and logistics ends of the process respectively. Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, at the launch, framed the exercise as an extension of the Prime Minister's own account of public service: "The Prime Minister has never worked in self interest. He truly believes in and embodies the fact that what the country has given him is not his to keep but has to be returned to people."
Here are the five hero objects worth knowing about.
This year's highest base price belongs to a silver memento of Lord Ram from Karnataka, the top of the 50 hero objects and the piece the Ministry has led its promotion with. Karnataka has a long, well-documented tradition of silver religious craftsmanship—temple vessels, idols, and ceremonial objects worked in repoussé and cast silver, historically associated with temple towns across the state. The Ministry's own material does not name the artisan, the donor, or the occasion on which it was presented to the Prime Minister; only the object, its origin state, and its base price have been made public.
The second-highest hero object is a silver replica of the Kakatiya Kala Thoranam, also called the Warangal Gate—one of four ornamental arches that originally formed the entrances to a great Shiva temple within Warangal Fort, built under the Kakatiya dynasty around the 12th to 13th century CE. The arch is not a minor regional curiosity: it has been the centrepiece of the Emblem of Telangana since 2014, paired with the Charminar at the seal's centre, and the original monument has sat on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 2010. A silver replica of it, in effect, miniaturises one of the state's most recognisable civilisational symbols.
The third hero object is a framed painting in the Gond tradition, the tribal art form of the Gond community of central India, concentrated in Madhya Pradesh but also practised across Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Odisha. The Tree of Life is one of the tradition's most recurring and sacred motifs—often modelled on the Mahua tree, which the Gond worship directly—rendered in the style's signature fine dot-and-line work built up in layers of bright, contrasting colour. The contemporary gallery form of Gond art traces largely to Jangarh Singh Shyam, the artist credited with moving the tradition from village walls onto paper and canvas in the 1980s, a shift that gave rise to what is now called the Jangarh Kalam school and brought Gond painting into national and international collections.
The fourth object depicts the Jagannath Parivar—Lord Jagannath alongside his elder brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra—mounted on a chariot form, a direct reference to the Rath Yatra at Puri, Odisha, one of Hinduism's largest annual festivals. Each deity travels in its own colossal wooden chariot, rebuilt from scratch every year: Jagannath's Nandighosha stands roughly 45 feet tall on 16 wheels, Balabhadra's Taladhwaja is slightly smaller, and Subhadra's Darpadalana smaller still, and the three are pulled by thousands of devotees from the Jagannath Temple to the Gundicha Temple two miles away. A mounted piece referencing this journey situates the memento squarely within one of India's most visually recognisable devotional traditions.
The fifth object is a framed artwork depicting Radha and Krishna, finished in 99.99 per cent fine gold plating. Gold-plated devotional art of this kind draws on metal-craft traditions found across several Indian states—Moradabad's brass and metalware industry in Uttar Pradesh and gold-foil devotional art associated with Andhra Pradesh's temple towns among them—though the Ministry's material does not specify which regional workshop or tradition this particular piece comes from.
Sport has its own place in the auction's history, even if this year's headline lots skew toward devotional art and craft. The record for the single highest individual sale still belongs to Neeraj Chopra's javelin from the Tokyo Olympics, sold for Rs 1.5 crore in 2021—a figure no memento since has come close to matching. Past editions have also carried items tied to Paralympic athletes, ceremonial swords, khadi shawls, and temple replicas, including a model of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya in the previous edition.
Since the auction began in January 2019, government figures presented in Parliament put the cumulative amount raised at more than Rs 52 crore—all of it directed to the Ganga's cleanup and conservation. Bidding continues through the official portal, with buyers able to register, bid, and have items packed and shipped by the designated handling agency once payment clears via SBI's gateway.