Bidders who participated in an auction of the mementos received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi have reportedly received broken or damaged goods.
A total of 1,348 mementos were auctioned, which include "replicas of the Ayodhya Ram temple, Char Dham, and the equipment gifted to the Prime Minister by winners of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games" such as the boxing gloves of Olympian Lovlina Borgohain, Paralympian Bhavani Devi's autographed fence and Neeraj Chopra's javelin.
At Rs 1.5 crore, the Olympic gold medal winner's javelin is the costliest memento auctioned to date according to the PM Mementos website. The proceeds from the auction will go to the Namami Gange intiiative, PM Modi had mentioned.
According to a report in Business Standard, the bidders can either seek a refund of their bid amount or get a replacement. Officials of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) — Tasked with conducting the auction — have reportedly contacted the bidders, it added.
While the publication did not cite an exact figure for the number of damaged mementos, it mentioned that the bids were submitted under the third round of e-auctions for gifts and mementos presented to the Prime Minister held from September 17, 2021 to October 7, 2021.
An NGMA official, brushed aside such cases of damaged mementos as "outliers." “Even if you order from Amazon or Flipkart, it does happen that broken items end up being delivered. Here, too, some broken items have been received by bidders but their number is very small,” he told the publication.
The official added that it was yet to be decided whether the refund for such items would be borne by the NGMA or India Post – which was responsible for the delivery and also charged customers for the same.
Greenize Jain, an MNC executive, told the publication that he had bid for two items — a shawl and a photo of a tree — among which the tree photo was damaged. After receiving a call from the NGMA, he returned the item and was informed by a courier agency that he would be getting a replacement. Jain has since not been able to get in touch with NGMA officials.
Ajay Kumar Mahawar, a member of the Delhi legislative assembly from Ghonda constituency, also received a broken memento. Mahawar, a BJP MLA, had bid for a framed photo of Matabari deity, Tripura Sundari, and bagged it for Rs 1,900. However, the photo frame was broken when it arrived last month.
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