A ladder worth lakhs. A 21-kg laddu along with its silver (two kg) container was bought for a whopping Rs 14.65 lakh at an auction in Hyderabad on Thursday.
However, the amount is no surprise for some Hyderabadis, as last time the coveted laddu went for no less than Rs 10.32 lakh according to Balapur Ganesh Utsav Committee.
The committee have been organizing the auction every year on the occasion of Ganesh puja since 1994 and the auctioned laddu is thought to be ‘lucky’.
The myth started spreading when in 1994 on the first year of the auction, a farmer, Kolan Mohan Reddy won the auction for Rs 450 and yielded good crops after he had sowed the laddu along with the seeds.
Since then, Kolan Mohan has won the auction four times
Here’s the list of winners of the previous auctions:
Some other similar auctions had seen Rs 15 lakh spent on a laddu.
This time, the buyer is Skylab Reddy, a businessman and a politician belonging to the Congress party. According to locals, Skylab was born on the same day when the US’s first space station crashed in 1979 (and that explains his naming).
He was among the 20 bidders alongside the local MLA.
Speaking to regional media, Skylab Reddy said that he had been trying to win the auction for the last two years and felt he was extremely fortunate to win this time.
He will distribute the laddu among locals, Reddy added.
Kallem Srikanth Reddy, a member of the organising committee said, “The money paid by the highest bidder is utilized for development work like repairing roads and building schools.