10 Indian-origin MPs get record votes in UK election, retain seats
LONDON Thursday’s election was not good news for Prime Minister Theresa May, who lost her majority in the House of Commons.
However, the election was good for the 10 Indian-origin MPs elected in 2015, all of whom retained their seats comfortably.
The 10 saw more votes cast in their favour, irrespective of whether they represented Labour or Conservative, and notwithstanding the fortunes of their parties at the national level.
The biggest gainer was Conservative Party candidate Rishi Sunak, who received 36,458 votes in the Richmond constituency, up from 27,744 in 2015. Another big gainers was Labour’s Keith Vaz — the longest-serving MP of Asian origin — who saw votes in his favour rise from 29,386 in 2015 to 35,116 in 2017 in the Leicester East constituency.
They were joined by two (both Labour) — Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) and Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston), taking the number of Indian-origin MPs to a record 12.
This is the first time in the 310-year-old history of the House of Commons that a Sikh woman, Preet Kaur Gill, and a turbaned Sikh, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, have been elected to the 650-member lower chamber of the British Parliament. Britain has about 4.2 lakh Sikhs – less than 2% of the island nation’s population.
The results show that the 12-member group of Indian-origin MPs won not only from constituencies with large population of Indian/Asian origin but also from seats where their presence is negligible, like Richmond Yorkshire, Witham and Wigan. The 12 are part of another record — they are part of the most diverse Parliament in Britain’s history, with 51 nonwhite MPs elected.
The latest election result is seen as a positive story of integration in Britain since the landmark election of 1987, when five non-white MPs were elected for the first time in British parliamentary history.
Since then, their number has been growing.