BJP candidate blames Sumalatha for poll loss

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Dr Indresh NS, the BJP candidate who contested the recentlyheld Assembly election from Melukote, lost the poll for which he has blamed Lok Sabha MP Sumalatha Ambareesh.

He accused the MP of helping Darshan Puttannaiah, a candidate of Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha (SKP), who won by a margin of 10,862 votes defeating JDS candidate CS Puttaraju. The losing BJP candidate claimed he would have won the election and was supposed to get at least 38,000 votes, which Sumalatha “prevented”.

“She had backed the BJP before the elections. But, just 6-7 days before the polls, she made a statement that Darshan Puttannaiah must win. I and my party workers oppose the statement. I will raise this issue during the party meeting in the coming days. People feared that CS Puttaraju might return to power and hence my vote share reduced drastically,” he claimed.

Interestingly, in March, Sumalatha announced that she would extend her support to the BJP in Mandya. Previously, the SKP had supported Sumalatha when she contested as an Independent candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Mandya.

According to reports, Somasekhar, a close aide of Sumalatha, said, “Before Sumalatha extended her support to the BJP, she had put some conditions. Farmers’ organisations had supported her and hence she had said that she will not campaign against Darshan Puttannaiah. She never campaigned for Puttannaiah directly anywhere. If she had campaigned, he would have won by a bigger margin. It’s not right for Indresh to speak about it. There are some people behind Indresh’s comment.”