28 Indian Origin MPs Elected For UK Parliament

The election for the United Kingdom’s parliament has ended. Result day was on Friday. Current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party lost the poll. After 14 years of exile, the Labour Party is back in power. Keir Starmer has been appointed as the new Prime Minister after Labour’s landslide victory.

As a result, 28 MPs of Indian origin have also been elected to the British parliament. The prominent faces who won the election include former PM Rishi Sunak himself. He will be returning to the 650-member House of Commons. Sunak has retained his Richmond and Northallerton seat with 23,059 votes. He was the first Asian and Hindu prime minister of the UK. Other names include Priti Patel, Gagan Mohindra, Sima Mehrotra, Lisa Nandy, Preet Kaur Gill, and Sojan Josheh.

Notably, 12 members of the Sikh community – six men and six women – were elected to the House of Commons. All 12 newly elected Sikh MPs belong to the Labour Party, which has come to power after more than a decade. With 12 Sikh MPs, the UK is now second only to Canada, which is home to a sizeable Punjabi diaspora and has 18 Sikh MPs.

Prominent among the Sikhs elected to the House of Commons is Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi. He has roots in Jalandhar, Punjab, and has been elected from the Slough constituency for the third time. Dhesi migrated to the UK in 1987 at the age of nine. He is the first turbaned Sikh in any European Parliament.