Rushnara, Tulip, Rupa win UK election
Tulip Siddiq, Rushanara Ali and Rupa Haq, the three Bangladesh-origin candidates, were re-elected in the UK general election 2017 from their respective constituencies on Friday.
Tulip Siddiq
Tulip, Sheikh Rehana’s daughter and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina niece, retained her Hampstead and Kilburn seat with a margin of 15,560 votes bagging 34,464 against her Conservative rival Claire-Louise.
In the previous 2015 polls Tulip was first elected to represent the constituency when she got 23,977 votes. Her main rival at that time was Conservative candidate Simon Marcus’ who received 22,839 votes.
After the election, Tulip was inducted into the shadow cabinet of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and joined Shadow Minister of Education Angela Rayner’s team of four as the Shadow Minister of Early Years education.
She, however, resigned as the shadow minister following Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to impose a three-line whip on Labour MPs to vote in favour of triggering Article 50.
Born in Mitcham, London in 1982, Tulip completed two Master’s degrees—one in English literature and another in Politics, Policy and Government—from King’s College London.
She was a former councilor in Regent’s Park and Cabinet Member for Culture and Communities in Camden Council, according to Wikipedia.
Tulip, who became the first Bengali woman councilor in Camden Council in May 2010, first contested the parliamentary polls in 2015.
Rushnara Ali
Rushanara Ali, the first British lawmaker with roots in Bangladesh, was re-elected as the MP of Bethnal Green and Bow with a majority of 42969 votes.
Rushanara had retained her seat in 2015 from East London’s Bethnal Green and Bow constituency with a majority of 24,317 votes..
Hailing from Biswanath in Sylhet, Rushanara was appointed UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy for Bangladesh after the 2015 elections.
Earlier, the Oxford-educated Rushanara, the first British lawmaker with roots in Bangladesh, performed the responsibility as the ‘shadow minister’ of International Development and Education after being elected as an MP for the first time in 2010.
Rupa Haq
Rupa Haq has retained the Ealing Central and Acton seat for Labour. She won 13,807 more votes than the Conservative candidate Joy Morrissey in a constituency that she had previously held by just over 200 votes.
Rupa was elected in the last UK general elections from Ealing Central and Acton constituency by bagging 22,002 votes. Her nearest rival Conservative Party-backed Angie Bray obtained 21,728 votes.
After the victory, Rupa was inducted into the Labour Party shadow cabinet as the home affairs minister.
Rupa is a senior lecturer at the sociology department of the Kingston University. Her ancestral home is in northern Pabna district in Bangladesh.
It has been known that, fourteen candidates of Bangladeshi origin contested in the UK general election, held on 8 June, 2017.
Among them eight of them are contesting from Labour Party, one from Liberal Democrats, one from Friends and four are running as independents.
Five British Bangladeshis competed against each other for the Labour Party in that election in 2015. Three of them won: Rushanara Ali, Tulip Siddiq and Rupa Haq.