Nemesis can come in many forms for politicians: as a woman marketing a solar energy company, for instance, as Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy’s rivals outside and inside the Congress are fervently hoping.For fellow Congressman and Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah , it might have arrived in the guise of an Hublot watch, though the luxury packaging would be of little comfort to the doughty politician. The controversy over the watch the CM should not have worn refuses to die down, despite his best efforts to dismiss it as trivial.And why would it? Consider the ingredients that have gone into the making of the latest Kannada potboiler: a watch that may be worth an eye-popping Rs 70 lakh.A sworn enemy who commissions a probe all the way to Dubai to “investigate” the price of the watch. And the mysterious gifter whose identity the CM claims he cannot recall (imagine being unable to remember who gave you a gift that you and I could not afford even if we sold our kidneys. That’s ingratitude).But let us, as the King told Alice, begin at the beginning. The first salvo was fired by HD Kumaraswamy , former prime minister HD Deve Gowda’s son and opposition Janata Dal (S) leader, who asked how a CM who calls himself a socialist and claims to be championing the cause of farmers could afford a watch costing several lakhs. Siddaramaiah initially dismissed the charges and said he did not know the value of the watch.There was a brief lull, till an enterprising cameraman got some close-up video footage of the watch elegantly wrapped around the wrist of the CM while he was visiting a former MP in a hospital in Mysuru.The even more enterprising Kumaraswamy got hold of that footage and commissioned someone in Dubai to “investigate” the value of the model and released a video of his own, with a watch salesman pointing out that the value of the diamond-studded model would be between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 70 lakh.And Kumaraswamy did not let up — in campaign speeches in the run-up to the recent panchayat polls, he drove home the point that while farmers were deep in debt in the state and committing suicide, the CM who claimed to represent the poor and downtrodden was wearing luxury watches.Adding fuel to the fire, Bangalore Mirror revealed that “Siddude” had been snapped wearing not just Hublot, but also Audemars Piguet, Rolex and Tissot watches, not to mention Hermes shawls. Political battles are won largely on perception, and Kumaraswamy’s shot hit home. Siddaramaiah has an assiduously cultivated image of a man of simple tastes, who identifies more with the farmer in rural Karnataka than the IT czars and startup icons of Bengaluru.When Kumaraswamy asks how the “earthy” politician could afford such prohibitively expensive accessories, people tend to nod in agreement.In an attempt to dismiss the furore as a joke, the chief minister first offered to sell the watch to Kumaraswamy for Rs 5 lakh (“I’m not a scrap dealer,” retorted the JD(S) leader). The CM then didn’t do himself any favours when he let on that he got the Hublot as a gift, without revealing details.Now, everyone naturally wants to know the identity of this extremely generous benefactor. One activist has filed a police complaint while another has written to the governor, seeking the prosecution of the CM for violating the Prevention of Corruption Act by not declaring the watch as an asset. The Bharatiya Janata Party state president has even said he would raise the issue in Parliament.The CM’s flashy timekeeper might well prove to be an Achilles Heel the Congress can ill-afford to expose: when Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi recently raised the “suit-boot ki sarkar” slogan while he was in the Northeast, questions were raised about his own party man’s expensive tastes. With the Budget session of the Assembly round the corner, the Opposition will be going for the jugular.The mother of all threats has, however, come from Kumaraswamy who has said unless the CM offered an explanation, he would reveal more information about the CM’s watch(es) in the days to come.This is not the first time Karnataka has seen politicians land in a soup over sporting flashy watches. CM Ibrahim, coincidentally a close associate of Siddaramaiah, and a minister in the R Gundu Rao government, courted controversy in the ’80s over a Rolex reportedly gifted by a minister in the United Arab Emirates government.He had to quit, partly because of the controversy. But Siddaramaiah could also take a leaf out of the book of Indonesian General Moeldoko. The country’s top general was confronted by reporters over a Richard Mille watch he was seen wearing, estimated to be worth over $1,00,000. In retaliation, the furious general took the watch off in front of them and smashed it to the ground, saying it had been a fake!Siddaramaiah might have to do something equally dramatic to get himself out of this quagmire. In the interim, he is now seen sporting a more aam aadmi watch and refuses to answer any further questions on the imbroglio. Following suit, other senior politicians in the state too have quietly replaced their expensive watches with HMTs and Titans.