Cartier Watch Controversy Engulfs Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar
Matching luxury watches ignite BJP fury against Karnataka’s “austerity” leaders.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar have plunged into a fresh political storm after photographs and video from a routine breakfast meeting revealed both leaders sporting identical high-end Cartier watches, each valued at approximately ₹43 lakh, instantly drawing accusations of lavish extravagance from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP wasted no time in weaponising the images, branding the display as blatant hypocrisy from a Chief Minister who has long cultivated an image of socialist simplicity and a Deputy Chief Minister who positions himself as a champion of the common man, arguing that such ostentatious accessories undermine the Congress government’s repeated claims of empathy for the underprivileged and commitment to austere governance.
Sources within the Chief Minister’s Office and Deputy Chief Minister’s Office sought to downplay the episode as an innocent coincidence, emphasising that both leaders maintain extensive personal collections of wristwatches accumulated over years, and that Siddaramaiah had been wearing the particular Cartier model for more than a month without attracting prior attention.
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The controversy has inevitably revived memories of a similar scandal during Siddaramaiah’s first tenure between 2013 and 2018, when he faced intense backlash for accepting a ₹70 lakh Hublot watch as a gift from a businessman, eventually returning the timepiece and declaring it a state asset under public pressure.
In a scathing social media offensive, the Karnataka BJP unit circulated a pointed video compilation juxtaposing the past Hublot episode with the current Cartier sighting, declaring that while the brand and price tag may have changed, Siddaramaiah’s underlying extravagant mindset remains unaltered, directly challenging the moral foundation of the Congress administration’s social justice narrative.
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