The pictures of two senior Janata Dal Secular leaders from Kerala, one of them a minister in the Left government, have found their way into a BJP-JDS poster in Bengaluru, triggering a controversy over its authenticity.

A day after the poster emerged and made headlines in Malayalam media, the Kerala unit of the JDS — which is a partner of the CPM-led LDF — is gearing up to lodge a complaint with the state police chief against those who fabricated and circulated it.

The issue cropped up on Saturday with mainstream Malayalam news media carrying stories about the peculiar development. They highlighted how NDA posters in Bengaluru carried the pictures of Kerala energy minister K. Krishnankutty and state JDS president Mathew T. Thomas.

The poster was linked to an NDA convention held in Bengaluru on March 27 for the Bengaluru Rural candidate, Dr C.N. Manjunath. He is the son-in-law of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda.

But the emergence of the original poster that didn’t feature the Kerala JDS leaders came as a big relief for the LDF.

Krishnankutty told reporters on Sunday that the Kerala JDS unit has been maintaining a separate identity ever since the parent organisation led by Gowda joined the NDA in September 2023.

“We are lodging a police complaint against the use of a fake poster with our pictures,” the minister said, adding that the Kerala JDS unit continued to be part of the LDF.

Although disapproving of the JDS leadership’s decision to join the NDA, Krishnankutty and Thomas continue to be members of the party’s national executive.

Gowda had in October 2023 put Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in a bind by claiming that he had approved the JDS-BJP alliance in Karnataka and elsewhere.

But Vijayan had slammed Gowda for “lying to cook up a logic for his political somersault” of joining hands with the BJP despite being a proclaimed socialist.