Three Sumalathas to Take on Sumalatha Ambareesh

In a move to create confusion among voters, three Sumalathas have filed their nomination papers.

Bengaluru: The sugarbelt of Mandya in Karnataka, from where actor Sumalatha Ambareesh is a key contestant for the Lok Sabha polls, is flooded with Sumalathas.

As Sumalatha Ambareesh, wife of the later actor Ambareesh, is gaining popularity by the day, the dirty tricks department of the JD(S) is in full swing as she is taking on chief minister HD Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil Kumaraswamy.

For the chief minister, this is a prestigious fight, hence all tricks are being used.

In a strange developments, three more Sumalathas filed their nominations for the Lok Sabha polls in order to confuse the voters.

The three candidates Sumalatha Siddegowda, Sumalatha Manjegowda and S Sumalatha. While the third Sumalatha is an active JD(S) member who was president of the Srirangapatna taluk panchayat, it was not immediately clear whether the first two are members of a political party.

The three candidates have asked for the same symbols that the actor did: a sugarcane farmer, a man blowing a turha and a coconut farm. Sumalatha is said to be particular about the symbol of a farmer with stacks of sugarcane on his head to counter the JD(S) symbol of a woman carrying a stack of hay.

Supporters of Sumalatha and fans of her husband say that this is nothing but a conspiracy.

“Three namesakes entering the fray on the last day of filing nominations and all of them asking for the same symbols that Sumalatha Ambareesh did suggests that it is a well-thoughtout plan by our political opponents to spoil our candidate’s chances,” said an Ambareesh fan from Mandya.

Meanwhile, Sumalatha accused Kumaraswamy of behaving like a dictator and abusing his power to disrupt her election meetings in Mandya.

She said there were repeated power cuts at her public rallies in Mandya and wanted to know why power outages occurred only at her meetings and not at the rallies of Kumaraswamy and his son Nikhil.

“The Mandya SP dashed off a letter to Chescom asking it to ensure uninterrupted power supply in Mandya on the day Nikhil filed his nomination papers,” she said at a rally. “He even asked them to be ready with a contingency plan in case of an unexpected outage. How could a police officer write a letter to help Kumaraswamy when the poll code says every political leader should be treated as an ordinary person? Is it not a testimony to how Kumaraswamy is misusing his power?”

Charging the state government with spying on her, Sumalatha alleged that her phone was tapped.