Actor and Member of Parliament Sumalatha Ambareesh announced that she will extend her support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming assembly elections. Sumalatha had called for a press meet at her residence in Mandya ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the district on March 12. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had earlier said that discussions were held with Sumalatha to induct her into BJP and that the process was underway. She maintained that her decision was taken keeping the development of Mandya district in mind.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Sumalatha became the first independent candidate to win the elections in Karnataka in 52 years. She won from the Mandya Lok Sabha constituency by defeating Nikhil Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)) in a bitterly contested election battle. The BJP did not field a candidate in Mandya and decided to back her while the Congress and JD(S) fielded Nikhil as their candidate. A few Congress rebels who were followers of her late husband and actor Ambareesh also supported her.
Karnataka's Mandya has a large number of voters from the Vokkaliga community and has been a bastion of the JD(S) for decades now. According to the 2011 census, more than half of the 3,83,594 Hindu voters in the constituency belong to the Vokkaliga community.
Sumalatha’s late husband and actor Ambareesh was a Member of Parliament from Mandya for the Congress between 1998 to 2009. Given his popularity in Mandya, there was a wave of sympathy for Sumalatha after his death in 2018. Several popular actors from the Kannada film industry had campaigned for Sumalatha ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Mandya has long been a stronghold of JD(S), which managed to win all seven assembly seats in the district during the 2018 polls. While Congress maintains considerable support in Mandya, BJP has struggled to maintain a foothold in the area. Nonetheless, BJP had attempted to expand its presence in the area and won in the 2019 by-polls, winning the KR Pet Assembly seat after MLA Narayan Gowda defected from JD(S) to join the saffron party. Narayan Gowda, who is a Minister in the Bommai government, is likely to join the Congress. Sumalatha campaigning for the BJP in the region will help the party.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Karnataka to inaugurate the Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Dharwad. He is also to participate in public rallies and road shows. This is the sixth time that the PM is visiting the poll-bound state this year.
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