Rise of the Indian origin politicians?

The 2017 General Election could set the benchmark for record number of parliamentary successes with Indian roots although the number of candidates is slightly down from the previous election.

The Conservative Party has nominated 13 candidates, down by 4 from the last election. The Labour Party has 14 candidates – same as previously. Unlike previous elections, many of the candidates are professionals and born in the UK. In the last parliament, both parties had 5 Indian-origin MPs.

In the last election, the then PM David Cameron went out of his way to attract the Indian as it argued that the Indian values are much closely aligned to the Conservatives than Labour, even though the ethnic trend has always been to favour Labour. However, that all changed in 2015 when the majority of the Hindu and Sikh votes went to the Tories.

The first Indian origin MP (and for that matter non-white MP) was Dadabhai Naoroji who was elected from Finsbury Central in 1892, followed by Mancherjee Bhownagree in 1895 and Shapurji Shaklatvala in 1922. The representation of the ethnic success in parliament has been gradual and there has not been a spectacular rise – it is not expected to happen in this election either, but there is a chance that for the first time, the Tories will have more Indian origin MPs.

The significant change occurred in 2010 with 27 ethnic MPs and then in 2015 with 41. It will be interesting to see if there is another significant jump?

There is also possibilities with Indian origin MPs from the smaller parties and even Independents. Former BBC presenter, Sujata Barot is standing as an Independent against Keith Vaz in Leicester East – that could be a turn up for the books!

The Conservative candidates are:

Rahoul Bhansali
Suella Fernandes
Samir Jassal
Ameet Jogia
Resham Kotecha
Priti Patel
Reena Ranger
Alok Sharma
Meera Sonecha
Rishi Sunak
Minesh Talati
Paul Uppal
Shailesh Vara

The Conservative Candidates are:

Rohit Dasgupta
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi
Preet Kaur Gill
Manjinder Khang
Seema Malhotra
Navendu Mishra
Lisa Nandy
Neeraj Patil
Kuldip Singh Sahota
Navin Shah
Virendra Sharma
Hitesh Tailor
Keith Vaz
Valerie Vaz

Rise of the Indian origin politicians?

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