We didn’t work for Sumalatha Ambareesh: Cheluvarayaswamy

Bengaluru: Under pressure from the Janata Dal (Secular), KPCC president Dinesh Gundurao on Friday summoned former MLA N. Cheluvarayaswamy and other Congress leaders, who attended a dinner  in a private hotel on Tuesday with Sumalatha Ambareesh, independent candidate for Mandya, and sought an explanation from them.

Mr Gundurao, however, ruled out any immediate action against the Congress leaders, saying the party would wait for the results of the Lok Sabha elections to be announced on May 23 before it took a decision in the matter.

Answering the summons,  Mr Cheluvarayaswamy and other former Congress legislators of Mandya , Ramesh Bandisiddegowda and K B Chandrashekar,  appeared before the KPCC president and insisted that they had not campaigned for Ms Sumalatha Ambareesh, who is proving a huge challenge for Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's son, Nikhil, contesting on a JD(S) ticket from Mandya.

They hit out against  JD(S) leaders and Mr Kumaraswamy in particular for “spreading rumours” that they had worked for Ms Sumalatha against the party's diktats and also strongly protested the Chief Minister “misusing” his office to collect the CCTV footage of  the dinner with the help of the police to build a case against them.

Claiming the dinner was hosted by Mr Sachidananda on the occasion of his birthday and Ms Sumalatha was merely an invitee, they maintained that no politics was discussed during the evening.

“Is it a crime to talk to (the late actor/politician) Ambareesh's wife even after the polling has taken place?," Mr Cheluvarayaswamy demanded, warning that if the JD(S) continued to dictate terms to them,  it would be difficult to strengthen the Congress  in Mandya district.