Be it Infosys co-founder and IT Industrialist Narayan Murthy’s son-in-law, Rishi Sunak or the first ever Sikh candidate contesting in MP elections from Northern Ireland, the UK polls in 2015 is set to see a number of Indian origin candidates contesting on May 7.
The Tories, as the Conservatives are colloquially called, have fielded 19 candidates from ethnic minorities, most of them are of Indian-origin.
The Quint brings 5 such Indian-origin candidates contesting in 2015:
While his father-in-law, Narayana Murthy had rejected former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s offer to join the government in 1999, Rishi is aspiring to step into the shoes of former UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague.
Rishi is a conservative, contesting from Richmond in North Yorkshire, England, which was Hague’s constituency. The 34-year-old Oxford University and Stanford MBA graduate co-founded a London-based global investment firm –The Children’s Investment Fund Management (UK) LLP and entered politics in 2014.
Born and raised in Hampshire, on the southern coast of England, his father is a doctor, and his mother ran her own chemist shop while he was growing up.
The 31-year-old Sikh politician will be the first Indian-origin candidate to contest in the UK General Elections from Northern Ireland. He is contesting from the Upper Bann constituency in the heart of Northern Ireland.
Amandeep Singh Bhogal, who was born in Jalandhar, is quite an unlikely Tory candidate. He moved to Northern Ireland in 2012, after spending his initial years in Kent.
He has been a member of the Conservative Party since he was 13. Bhogal joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office right after finishing school. Amandeep traveled back to Punjab to get married, when he was just 19. So he is in the habit of starting most things ‘young’.
The Indian-origin brother-sister duo are set to jump into the political arena by contesting the UK polls on May 7.
31-year-old Arun Photay, and his sister Suria, 27, are contesting on a Conservative Party ticket from Yardley, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton South East, respectively. And while Arun is already a local councillor, Suria is contesting elections for the first time.
Arun and Suria are both barristers by profession. Arun has in the past been a councillor at the Wolverhampton City Council (2012 - at Present), while Suria works at a local law firm in Wolverhampton.
Though both siblings were born and raised in Wolverhampton, UK, but their roots are from Punjab where their parents and rest of the family moved from.
This Indian-origin Conservative Party candidate from the Wealden Constituency, East Sussex claims she was first woman in her family to go to college and university.
Her father Abdhul Ghani served as a school master in Kashmir in the 1960s. Her family moved to Birmingham in the 70s.
I became the first women in my family to go to college and university. First at University Central England/Birmingham City University followed by Leeds University, graduating with a Masters in International Relations.
– Nus Ghani
Nus has 20 years of work experience outside politics. She started with managing health policy for the charities Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Age Concern. She has also worked internationally for the BBC World Service and was posted to various trouble spots, including Burma, Russia, and Afghanistan.
She did contest once before in the the 2010 General Election from Birmingham Ladywood, but lost. She has also been the Deputy Chairman for the Brentford and Isleworth Conservatives Association.
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