In a first, UK sends Sikh members to parliament

LONDON / JALANDHAR: Punjabis had something to cheer in the chaos that followed the

UK parliament

election results on Friday.

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

became first turbaned Sikh MP while

Preet Kaur Gill

became the first Sikh woman to enter the UK parliament.

The UK parliament now has four Punjabi origin MPs, all from the

Labour Party

, with sitting MPs Virendra Sharma and Seema Malhotra retaining their seats. Incidentally, all of them have their roots in Jalandhar.

“Credit to the Labour Party leadership for taking the bold step of giving Sikhs the opportunity to fight for winnable seats," said Amrik Singh, chair of the Sikh Federation UK.

Another turbaned candidate Kulip Singh Sahota lost from Telford to Lucy Allan from the Conservative party with a thin margin of 720 votes.

Born in Slough, 38-year-old Dhesi had won the Slough seat with a margin of around 7,500 votes in 2015 but this time the lead increased to 16,998 votes.

Dhesi, who currently lives in Kent and is a Gravesham Borough Councillor, was the youngest Sikh mayor in Europe when he became Mayor of Gravesham in Kent. He had stood unsuccessfully as an MP in Gravesham in 2015. His father Jaspal Singh, who runs a construction company in the UK, was president of Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar at Gravesend for many years. Spread over 805 acres, it is the largest gurdwara in the UK spread.

He tweeted that he was “humbled and honoured.” “I thank the voters for bestowing trust in me and to all who made it possible,” he wrote, after paying his respects and seeking blessings at Slough gurdwara.

The victory celebrations reverberated in his village, Raipur, around 15 km from Jalandhar as people started thronging the residence of his relatives. One of his uncles, Paramjit Singh Raipur is a Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) member.

Gill, 44, who was a Labour councilor in Sandwell, won from Birmingham Edgbaston. She replaced party MP Gisela Stuart, who joined the ‘leave’ campaign in the Brexit referendum. Gill is also a board member of the Sikh Network, a collective of community activists and professionals in the UK.

She was the only Asian to contest the Labour-held marginal seat and managed to increase the Labour majority from 2,706 to 6,917. Before becoming a Labour councillor on Sandwell Council, she had worked with vulnerable children and families in Birmingham. The daughter of a bus driver, she was born in Edgbaston.

Gill’s father Daljit Singh Shergill migrated from Khera village near Jalandhar to the UK in 1962. “She last visited us in February to attend my son’s wedding,” said her first cousin Avtar Singh, an agriculturist.

Labour Party's Edgbaston candidate Preet Kaur Gill who defeated Conservative Party rival Caroline Squire. (Facebook/Preet Gill 4 Edgbaston)

Both Dhesi and Gill are second generation Sikhs in the UK and interestingly, distant relatives.

Malhotra’s family had migrated during Partition from Rawalpindi to Delhi while her mother hailed from Jalandhar. Virendra Sharma, a London School of Economics graduate, is from Jalandhar city. His father late Lekh Raj Sharma was a senior Congress politician.

Apart from fielding Sikh candidates, Labour had also promised to hold an independent public enquiry into the actions of the UK government during Operation Blue Star in June 1984 as well as into the restrictions placed on Sikhs in the UK. The demands for an enquiry came from the Sikh community after declassification of secret documents in 2014 which suggested that British help was sought by the Indian government in Operation Blue Star.

Punjabis turn global politicians

With the first turbaned Sikh and first Sikh woman making it to the UK parliament, Punjabi origin politicians have a fast expanding footprint across the globe. Canada’s federal government already has four Sikh ministers, including defence minister Harjit Sajjan. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau had famously remarked in March last year that he had more Sikhs in his cabinet than (Indian PM) Modi. Besides, Nimrata "Nikki" Haley, the US ambassador to the UN is also of Punjabi origin. Ontario MP Jagmeet Singh, first turbaned MLA in Ontario assembly, has already announced his bid to run for federal leadership of NDP party which may also put him in the race to become PM of Canada. Earlier, Ujjal Dosanjh was elected British Columbia premier.