Union Minister of Culture and Tourism Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Sunday (December 28, 2025) urged former Congress president Sonia Gandhi to return the correspondence and documents of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library, stating that they belonged to the country and not to any individual.
The minister said, “The Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library (PMML), which was formerly the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), was established after the death of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. A society was created (to manage the museum), but it did not function properly. Subsequently, the NMML was renamed as PMML (in 2023).”
He said that over 20 years, from 1970 to 1990, all non-official documents related to Nehru were brought to the museum, including letters Nehru wrote to people, the replies received, and his personal comments and notes.
“Similar documents of all the Prime Ministers are preserved at the museum. There are about 2.5 crore such documents. Of them, 4 lakh are related to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru alone,” Shekhawat said.
While documents of other Prime Ministers are the permanent property and heritage of the museum, it has been written that Nehru’s documents were not given to the museum as a loan or gift, but for safe custody, Mr. Shekhawat stated.
