With only days left for the bypolls to three Assembly segments and the zilla and taluk panchayat elections, everyone appears to be looking at Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s wrist. A guessing game on the worth of his watch is making more noise than issues plaguing people.
It all began with Janata Dal (Secular) leader and former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy saying in an election rally that Mr. Siddaramaiah, who boasts of his socialist credentials and his government’s pro-poor policies, was wearing a watch worth over Rs. 50 lakh and sunglasses valued at Rs. 2 lakh. While the Chief Minister dismissed this by saying that he was ready to “sell the watch to anyone for Rs. 10 lakh” and offered it to Mr. Kumaraswamy himself, the issue has refused to die down with the latter on Tuesday saying that he was “not a trader in second-hand goods.” He even claimed in Bidar on Tuesday that he had contacted the company that sold the particular brand of watch and it was “very costly”. Reacting to a TV channel report on Tuesday that the price of the “diamond-studded watch” was Rs. 60 lakh to Rs. 70 lakh, the Chief Minister said that Mr. Kumaraswamy was “spreading lies”. The saga of the watch is refusing to die down as of now.
