Ashok Kumar

703PM GMT sixteen March 2010

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First inaugurated for the prototype of Langbaurgh at a by-election in 1991, he was degraded five months after but returned in 1997 for the new seat, that he had hold absolutely ever since.

A former British Steel investigate scientist, Kumar played a heading purpose in the debate to save the hulk Redcar steel plant, that in use most of his constituents. He had strongly upheld the Indian Tata group"s takeover of Corus (which had acquired BSC) in 2007, and urged the new owners to keep the plant open when the main patron at once pulled out last year.

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An capable internal MP who reckoned to have met 80 per cent of his constituents, Kumar campaigned locally opposite blade crime, and pulpy for a store of Anglo-Saxon value detected on Teesside and the papers of Captain Cook, innate in the constituency, to be put on show there.

At Westminster, he chaired the successful Northern Group of Labour MPs and was Parliamentary in isolation cabinet part of to the Environment Secretary Hilary Benn. In 2006 he was the initial part of of the government"s "payroll" to urge Tony Blair to have approach for Gordon Brown, observant Blair could most appropriate secure his bequest by permitting a "smooth and fast succession".

Ashok Kumar was innate in the Indian holy city of Haridwar in Uttar Pradesh on May twenty-eight 1956, the son of Jagat Ram Saini and Santosh Kumari (of Hindu and Sikh descent, he became an active Humanist). After the family changed to Derby he attended Rykneld boys" delegate complicated and Derby & District College of Art & Technology.

Kumar review Chemical Engineering at Aston University, being awarded a BSc in 1978, an MSc in 1980 and a PhD in Fluid Mechanics in 1982; he chaired the university Labour Club. After 3 years as a investigate associate at Imperial College, London, he changed to Teesside in 1985 and assimilated British Steel.

Within dual years he was inaugurated to Middlesbrough council, and in Nov 1991 fought the Langbaurgh by-election caused by the genocide of the rumbustious Conservative Richard Holt. When Holt"s mother rang a crony to discuss it her he had died peacefully, the retort was "It"s the initial still thing he"s finished in his life." The debate was sharp-witted too, Lindi St Clair, aka "Miss Whiplash", contesting it for the Corrective Party (she lost her deposit).

Kumar took Langbaurgh by 1,975 votes on a 9.1 per cent pitch to Labour, raising Neil Kinnock"s hopes of winning the imminent ubiquitous election. At Westminster Michael Foot, whose speeches had desirous him to stick on the party, took Kumar underneath his wing. But he hardly had time to solve prior to John Major went to the country.

A late Tory pitch not usually kept Major in energy in Apr 1992 but saw Kumar defeated, by 1,564 votes, by Michael Bates, whom he had knocked about in the by-election. Kumar returned to BSC and became vice-chairman of Middlesbrough preparation committee.

Determined never to be knocked about again, he worked the new Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East subdivision hard, and in 1997, helped by range changes and a complicated inhabitant pitch to Labour, degraded Bates by 10,607 votes. He defended the chair with majorities of 9,351 votes in 2001 and just 8,000 in 2005.

Politics in Middlesbrough became overshadowed by a crime review in to Det Supt Ray Mallon, the former head of the town"s CID and well known as "RoboCop" since of his difficult line on law and order. When the three-year probe, costing some-more than �3 million, identified no wrongdoing, Kumar demanded an inquiry, observant "Ray Mallon will be means to travel the streets with his head hold high. The people of Teesside will wish critical questions answered. How most has this imitation cost the taxpayer?" Mallon got his revenge; he stood for mayor opposite the central Labour claimant and won.

The Daily Telegraph"s disclosures last summer about MPs" losses showed that Kumar had paid for a Westminster prosaic utilizing taxpayers" income and let a womanlike crony live there rent-free for scarcely 4 years after he paid for a new �400,000 home nearby. He "flipped" his second-home nomination so he could assign the debt seductiveness on the new skill to expenses. Kumar pronounced he was incompetent to sell the flat, paid for in 1997, since it indispensable �80,000 value of repairs, so his crony changed in "temporarily".

Kumar, who was unmarried, served from 1997 to 1999 on the Science and Technology Select Committee, afterwards for dual years on the Trade and Industry Select Committee.

Since 2003 he had been PPS to Benn, who was Secretary for International Development until 2007, when he became Environment Secretary.

Kumar was authority of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (Post), and had chaired the Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies and the All Party Groups for Chemical Industries, India and Bahrain. He was a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, a Chartered Engineer and a part of of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee and the Energy Institute.