BJP fields five-time MLA S Suresh Kumar as its nominee for Karnataka Assembly Speaker; banks on his clean image

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday has fielded senior leader S Suresh Kumar as its candidate for the post of Karnataka Assembly Speaker to be held on Friday alongside Congress' Ramesh Kumar, who is a former speaker.

Suresh Kumar, a fifth term MLA from Bengaluru, filed his nomination papers before Assembly Secretary S Murthy at Vidhana Soudha on Thursday.

File image of Suresh Kumar. Image courtesy: @nimmasuresh

According to a report in News18, Suresh Kumar told reporters that he has filed his nomination on the directions from BJP's state unit chief BS Yeddyurappa and other leaders. "Based on the strength of numbers and various other factors, our party leaders have confidence that I will win. With that confidence I have filed my nomination," he said.

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According to media reports, Kumar, a lawyer by profession, came into electoral politics as a city corporator in 1983 on a BJP ticket. He was also its leader in the Council and has also been closely associated with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS).

He became an MLA from Rajajinagar in 1994 and has been elected from the constituency four times since then except in 2004 when he was defeated by Narendra Kumar NL of the Congress. He was the Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs in the first BJP-led government in a southern state in 2008. As per a report in The Economic Times, Kumar made his mark in the Assembly by highlighting important issues relating to urban and education sectors.

However, in 2011, when the then chief minister Yeddyurappa had to step down after the Ballari mining scam, Kumar was among the names considered by BJP for the chief minister's post.

But in the run-up to the recently concluded Assembly elections in Karnataka, the Congress' legal cell had filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau against Kumar for amassing illegal wealth, as per a Deccan Herald report.

His daughter's name was also dragged in a controversy when the police, along with Congress workers, raided the Yuva Morcha office in Rajajinagar and seized unaccounted cash worth Rs 1.9 lakh. According to a Deccan Chronicle report, it was accused by the Congress that Kumar's daughter Disha was among the people caught with the money kept for distributing among the voters.

However, Kumar and his daughter denied all allegations and clarified that they had no connection with the person arrested with the amount and that this was a political ploy to ruin Kumar's image, the reported stated.