New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday said the proceeds from the auctioning of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pinstriped Bandhgala suit will go for public causes. The party also said that he had undertaken many such sales during his stint as Gujarat chief minister.
The auction will go on for three days beginning February 18 and the proceeds will go to the Namaami Gange Trust Fund for helping fund girls' education.
Talking to reporters BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said, "The Prime Minister has given a message that whatever is coming through public cause, should go for the public cause.
Even when he was chief minister he has auctioned all the personal gifts given to him and then the entire money, which was to the best of my knowledge more than Rs 90 crores, has been given to the development funds of the tribal areas."
"This time he is giving the entire money to the 'Namaami Gange' projects. So this is our mindset. The Congress party is trying to make an issue out of this," he added.
Apart from Modi's personalized pinstripe suit, the auction also has over 455 items that were received as gifts by Modi and Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel.
Today, a Surat-based textile businessmen bid a whopping Rs 1.21 crore in an auction for Modi's controversial pinstripe monogrammed bandhgala suit.
The gift items belonging to Prime Minister Modi is a national treasure and the money generated from the auction will be utilised for the ‘Clean Ganga Mission', Surat Municipal Commissioner Milind Toravane said.
The event was organised at SMC's Science Convention Centre at city-lights road in Surat as the Prime Minister's Office(PMO) had decided to hold the auction event in the city.
On closer inspection, photographs of the suit showed that each stripe was actually comprised of tiny letters spelling out his name in full — Narendra Damodardas Modi — and embroidered on the fabric vertically down the stripe.
The suit had triggered a debate in social media while the Prime Minister was slammed by his political opponents for wearing an expensive suit. Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh called Modi a “megalomaniac“.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi also had raked up the issue of Modi's expensive suit during the campaign for Delhi assembly polls in which the Bharatiya Janata Party was routed. Some reports said the suit cost nearly Rs 10 lakh.
