Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gifted traditional artifacts from poll-bound Gujarat to the foreign leaders he met on the sideline of the G20 summit at Bali in Indonesia on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Gujarat will go to polls on December 1 and 5.
The prime minister also gifted some of his foreign counterparts artifacts from Himachal Pradesh, where polling for the state assembly elections were held on November 12 last. The votes in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, both currently ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, will be counted and results will be declared on December 8 next.
When Modi had visited the temples in Kathmandu in May 2018, the Congress had criticized the prime minister for allegedly trying to influence the voters to vote for his Bharatiya Janata Party by offering prayers in the Hindu shrines in the capital of Nepal on the day of polling for the state assembly elections in Karnataka. The Trinamool Congress had moved the Election Commission in March 2021 after the Prime Minister had visited and paid obeisance at a sacred shrine of the Matuas at Orakandi in Bangladesh ahead of the assembly polls in West Bengal. The Matuas account for nearly 17% of the population of West Bengal and can influence the poll-results in 40-45 of the total 294 assembly constituencies in the State.
Modi gifted the United Kingdom’s new Hindu Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, a “Mata Ni Pachedi”, a handmade sacred textile wall piece made in Gujarat. The “Mata Ni Pachedi” is generally offered by the devotees to the temples of goddesses. The two prime ministers had a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the G20 summit in Bali on Wednesday. It was the first meeting between the two leaders.
The prime minister gifted his new counterpart in Italy, Giorgia Meloni, a Patan Patola Dupatta – a scarf woven by the Salvis of Patan in northern Gujarat. Meloni took over as the Prime Minister of Italy on October 22 last. She is the first woman to take over the top office in the Government of Italy.
Modi gifted Agate Bowls from Khambhat in Gujarat to French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during his meetings with them in Bali on Wednesday. The bowls are made out of single semi-precious stones extracted from the underground mines in the riverbeds of the Khambhat region of Gujarat.
He gifted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia a Pithora wall-painting made by the Rathwa artisans from Chhota Udaipur in Gujarat. President Joe Biden of the United States got miniature paintings from Kangra in Himachal Pradesh. His Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez too got a Kanal brass set from Mandi and Kullu from Himachal Pradesh.
Modi gifted a silver bowl from Surat in Gujarat and a shawl from Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh to Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, who hosted the G20 summit.
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