Bengaluru: Mandya Lok Sabha member Sumalatha on Friday remained non-committal of her support to former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy who is the Janata Dal Secular (JDS) nominee for Mandya parliamentary seat in the ensuing Lok Sabha election.
A meeting by State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) B.Y. Vijayendra with Sumalatha remained inconclusive with Sumalatha stating to the BJP Chief that she would make her stance clear in a couple of days after meeting her supporters and eliciting their opinion on her contest or on extending support to the JDS-BJP consensus nominee.
Sumalatha, wife of late minister Ambareesh won the Mandya Lok Sabha seat as an independent nominee in the 2019 election against her nearest rival JDS-Congress nominee Nikhil son of H.D. Kumarswamy. Later she extended her support to BJP.
In the ensuing election, Sumalatha aspired to contest from Mandya on BJP ticket but the BJP spared the seat for its alliance partner JDS and Kumaraswamy emerged as the BJP-JDS consensus nominee.
However, Sumalatha is yet to make a stand clear on her contest from Mandya and her supporters have stated that their leader would be fighting the Mandya seat as an independent nominee.
She told reporters in Bengaluru that she would make her stand after meeting her supporters and that the announcement on her future course of action would be made in Mandya. “I wished that the Mandya seat would be retained with BJP,” she said.
To win the support of Sumalatha, State BJP Chief B.Y. Vijayendra on Friday met Sumalatha and discussed with her asking for her support for the JDS-BJP consensus nominee Kumaraswamy. After the meeting, Vijayendra told reporters that Sumalatha would make a stand on her role soon and exuded confidence that she would extend her support to the consensus nominee.
Vijayendra stated that Sumalatha told him that she would decide on her next course of discussions with her supporters in Mandya and he has agreed to the views expressed by Sumalatha.
