Sumalatha Ambareesh wins, but is she India’s first independent woman MP

Mandya, May 23: Sumalatha Ambareesh scored a resounding win over Nikhil Kumaraswamy, the son of Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy. In her victory from Mandya, she has also created a bit of history.

She becomes only the third independent candidate from Karnataka to win a Lok Sabha election. She is also the first independent candidate to win an election from Karnataka in the past 52 years.

In the erstwhile state of Mysore, independent candidate, Dubey Rajaram Giridarlal won from the Bijapur North segment in 1957. In the 1967 elections, Dinakar Desai won as an independent from the Kanara constituency.

However Sumalatha is not the first woman independent candidate to win a Lok Sabha election.

Annie Mascarene was elected to the First Lok Sabha as an independent candidate from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency in 1951. She was the first woman MP from Kerala and also one of the 10 elected to Parliament that year.