Saima Bhat
SRINAGAR
David Cameron whose Conservative Party has 331 of the 650 berths in the British House of Commons has a Kashmir origin woman Nusrat Ghani. She is one of the 13 Muslim lawmakers including eight women.
This House of Commons that will see Cameron ruling UK for the second term has more Muslim women including six from Labour Party, one Conservative and one Scottish Nationalist Party. The three main parties have 331, 232 and 56 seats in the British Parliament, respectively.
Nus Ghani, as voters know her, was elected on as a Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Wealden, following in the footsteps of Charles Hendry MP. Once the results were out she has reportedly said, “I was thrilled to have been selected at an Open Primary, a public meeting / interview attended by nearly 400 residents.”
Nusrat’s father Abdhul Ghani served as a school master in Kashmir in the 1960s before the family migrated to UK. “I am the daughter of immigrants and the first woman in my family to go to college and university,” Nusrat was quoted saying. “Coming from such a background taught me the importance of education, aspiration and the work ethic to deliver the opportunity and social mobility to succeed.”
Ghani was educated in state schools in Birmingham and then at Cadbury Sith Form College and the University of Central England. She joined the Conservative Party in 2009, in response to David Cameron’s call for a wider range of people to offer themselves as candidates.
In 2010, she stood in Birmingham Ladywood. This was a particular challenge as the previously chosen candidate had to stand down for family reasons – leaving Mrs Ghani with only a hundred days before the election. She managed a creditable result seeing the Conservative vote share increased by 3.5 percentage points. The sitting Conservative MP, Charles Hendry, had a majority of 17,179 last time.
After the election, women make up 29% of the new intake, up from 22% in 2010. New MPs make up 43% of Labour’s share, helped too by the SNP intake, of whom more than a third (36%) are women.
Kashmir-origin population is considered to be nearly half a million. They migrated from PaK areas, mostly Mirpur after the Mangla Dam devoured hundreds of villages. Though initially their number was not more than 5000, they grew up rapidly and are found across UK, mostly in Bradford. Their second and third generations are more British than their grand-parents and are contributing to the socio-economic life of the country which does not exclude politics.
