Karnataka: Sumalatha Ambareesh to join BJP, refrains from contesting Lok Sabha polls against Kumaraswamy

In a major relief for JDS leader HD Kumaraswamy, Mandya’s incumbent MP Sumalatha Ambareesh, who won as an independent candidate in the 2019 general elections against his son Nikhil, announced on Wednesday that she would join the BJP and not contest the polls this time. Kumaraswamy is the NDA’s candidate from the constituency for the Lok Sabha polls, and the suspense over Sumalatha’s decision had kept the BJP-JDS coalition on tenterhooks, fearing that votes would be split in the region if she opted to contest independently.

“I am not contesting the elections this year but this does not mean I am leaving Mandya. On the contrary you will see me, not as an independent but as someone with the backing of the rank and file of a party whose leader envisages a developed India by 2047,” she said.

The BJP, she said, was a natural choice over the Congress, as the party had released funds amounting to around Rs 4000 crore for Mandya district. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added, had always treated her with respect as well.


The BJP, she said, had offered to let her contest from either Bengaluru North, Chikkaballapur or Mysore-Kodagu, but she had opted to stay with the people of Mandya. “If I contest as an independent, it will be to prove something to myself. Who will benefit from that and who will lose, we have to think. We have to be mature,” she said.

There was no question of her joining the Congress, she declared, saying “Congress had no need for Sumalatha in the past, has no need for her in the present and nor will it need her in future.” She added that although some of her supporters wanted her to join the grand old party, it would be “an affront on the pride of my late husband, Ambareesh.”

Sumalatha’s husband, the late Union Minister and celebrated actor-turned politician Ambareesh had passed away in 2018. Though he was from the Congress, Sumalatha had contested as an independent candidate in the 2019 general elections after the then Congress-JDS coalition had denied her a ticket.