Tejasvi Surya

Lakya Suryanarayana Tejasvi (born 16 November 1990), known better as Tejasvi Surya, is an Indian politician, RSS swayamsevak and lawyer at the Karnataka High Court. He is the Member of Parliament in the 17th Lok Sabha from the Bangalore South constituency, representing the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Surya was born on 16 November 1990 to Rama and L.A. Suryanarayana, who had previously been Joint Commissioner of Excise. At the age of 9, he sold his paintings and donated the amount to the Army's Kargil fund.He was awarded the National Balashree Honour in 2001 while studying at Sri Kumaran Children’s Home, Thyagarajanagar. He later graduated from Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies with a Bachelor of Academic Law and an LLB. In 2008, he founded an NGO called Arise India. He has previously written for IndiaFacts. Surya considers B. R. Ambedkar inspiration since childhood.

Early years

Surya was an active member of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and was even the General Secretary of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). He gained national recognition for leading the Digital Communications Team of Karnataka BJP during the 2018 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election. He had actively contributed to the Bharatiya Janata Party campaign for the 2014 Indian general election. He attended a leadership course in the UK, which was organised by the UK High Commission and in 2017, was one of the key leaders behind BJP's 'Mangalore Chalo' rally. As a lawyer, he had represented many BJP leaders like Mahesh Hegde (editor of Post-Card News), Pratap Simha (MP from Mysore) and had helped lawyer Ashok Haranhalli in defending corruption cases of B.S. Yeddyurappa. He has been mentored by R. Ashoka and V. Somanna. His uncle Ravi Subramanya is a senior leader of the BJP and an MLA representing Basavanagudi.

17th Lok Sabha

The Bangalore South (Lok Sabha constituency) was governed since 1996 by former minister Ananth Kumar until his death in 2018. Tejasvi Surya was chosen to contest for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from this constituency over Kumar's wife, Tejaswini Ananth Kumar, due to his previous work. While she initially had the support of BJP Karnataka state president B.S. Yeddyurappa, senior BJP and RSS leader B.L. Santosh convinced the party's leadership to choose Surya. He won the elections by defeating B. K. Hariprasad of Congress by 3,31,192 votes, making him the youngest MP to represent the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), after having assumed office at the age of 28 years, 6 months, 7 days.

Surya took his oath as an MP in Kannada on 17 June 2019. On 10 July 2019, during the Zero Hour, Surya requested the Home Minister Amit Shah to extend the National Registrar of Citizens to Karnataka, alleging an increasing influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in his state. On the problem of garbage in Bangalore, Surya responded that he could only bring it to the notice of the authorities and suggested to scold them. He then claimed he lacked any authority to solve the problem. This response was criticised by the public.

Political views

Surya is a strong supporter of Hindutva. He credits Vir Savarkar, Aurobindo, BR Ambedkar and Swami Vivekananda for inspiring him and shaping his ideology of Hindutva and Indian cultural pride. He is an RSS swayamsevak and has been a supporter of same-sex marriage.. He attributed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 protests to be led by 'uneducated, illiterate, and puncture-wallahs'. Bharatiya Janta Party should become a Hindu Party and 'namby-pamby secularism had no place in new India'.

The Indian National Congress, an Indian political party, shared screenshots of tweets posted by a woman who alleged that Surya abused her, and asked the BJP whether Surya's candidature was a continuation of the BJP's abusive remarks. Following this and the announcement of his Lok Sabha candidature, Surya obtained a temporary injunction against 49 media outlets and social media platforms, restraining them from publishing any "defamatory statements" against him. Surya was later summoned by the Karnataka State Commission for Women for his alleged abuse of the woman, in addition to a tweet of his that opposed reservations for women after Mahila Congress lodged complaint against him.