Sumalatha, wife of late Congress leader M.H. Ambarish, defeated Nikhil Kumaraswamy, son of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, in Mandya. What seemed like a neck-and-neck fight in the morning soon turned into a landslide victory for Sumalatha.

As an independent candidate backed by BJP, Sumalatha secured 7,03,660  votes while Nikhil Kumaraswamy secured 5,77,784 votes.

By defeating Nikhil Kumaraswamy, Sumalatha has become the first independent candidate to win a Lok Sabha seat from Karnataka after its formation 52 years ago.

She is also only the third independent candidate ever to win a seat in Karnataka in the history of Lok Sabha elections so far.

What happens to the movie: Producer Rockline Venkatesh, actors Darshan and Yash were active in Sumalatha’s campaign, meanwhile Congress MLA and Rockline Venkatesh’s close relative MLA Muniratna Naidu campaigned for Nikhil and even made a grandiose announcement that he will not release the film Muniratna Kurukshetra if Nikhil did not win.

Ironically, Darshan plays the lead role in the film Kurukshetra and Nikhil Kumaraswamy plays the role of Abhimanyu. The big budget movie is set to be released in August.

Other Sumalathas bag 20,563 votes

Three other namesakes of Sumalatha who were (allegedly) propped up by the JD(S) together bagged 20,563 votes. In all, 13,79,622 votes were polled in Mandya and Sumalatha Ambarish got 7,03,660 votes and Nikhil Kumaraswamy polled 5,77,784 votes.

The other three Sumalathas – Sumalatha (serial number 19) polled  8,898 votes,      M. Sumalatha (serial number 21) polled 8,542 votes and Sumalatha (serial number 22) polled 3,117 votes. Probably these would have   even made a difference had the margin been any lesser.