Thiruvanathapuram, Wednesday 27 May 2009: Ahead of joining the Union government as a Minister of State, Congress leader K V Thomas today resigned his membership of the Kerala Assembly.

Thomas, elected this time from the Ernakulam Lok Sabha seat, submitted his resignation to Speaker K Radhakrishnan as MLA from the Ernakulam Assembly seat.

A college teacher by profession, Thomas was brought to full-time politics by his one-time mentor K Karunakaran and became a candidate of the party in Ernakulam in 1984, which he represented in Parliament till 1996.

In 2001, he returned to state politics and became Minister of Tourism and Fisheries in the A K Antony Government. Thomas was one of the three Congress MLAs who contested and won the Lok Sabha polls, others being K Sudhakaran from Kannur and K C Venugopal from Alappuzha.