I am not ready for electoral politics, Sumalatha tells Mandya Congressmen

Bengaluru: Congress workers from Mandya, who are upset at the party's reported decision to let the JD(S) contest from the constituency this Lok Sabha poll, are trying to persuade the late actor-turned-politican, M H Ambareesh’s wife, Sumalatha to contest from it as an independent.

But going by sources, they are having little success as she is not ready to take a plunge into electoral politics as yet.

Congress workers have been openly voicing their frustration ever since Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil has been tipped to be the consensus candidate of the coalition partners from Mandya, arguing that the party's vote base in the constituency could suffer if the seat is given to the JD(S).

Several district Congress leaders have also approached Ms Sumalatha to contest the LS poll as an independent if the party refuses to field her, going by sources close to family. They have reportedly tried to persuade her saying, they could not work with anyone else or a JD(S) candidate after having worked with Ambareesh in Mandya.

But Ms Sumalatha is said to have merely pacified and sent them back and if family sources are to be believed, she is unwilling to join politics as of now due to her other commitments. Often called Mandyada Gandu (Mandya’s man), Ambareesh had represented the constituency in parliament first as a Janata Dal MP and later as a Congress MP before he died of a heart attack in Bengaluru in November last year.