Indian Origin NZ MPs -Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, Parmjeet Parmar and Priyanca Radhakrishnan
By Gurbir Singh, Hamilton (New Zealand)
Three Indian-origin politicians,including two women, have been elected to New Zealand’s parliament in general elections that concluded yesterday.
While Kanwaljit singh Bakshi is all set to begin his fourth successive term, it will be Parmjeet Parmar’s second term (both list MPs of National Party), and 38-years old Priyanca Radhakrishnan will debut as the Labour Party’s list MP.
Mahesh Bindra, a sitting list MP of New Zealand First Party, is out of the parliament as his party failed to garner enough votes.
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Delhi-born Bakshi (NZ’s first Indian and first Sikh MP) graduated from the University of Delhi in 1985 and moved to New Zealand in 2001 with his family and was first elected in 2008.
Parmar, who lives in Auckland, migrated to New Zealand from India in 1995. She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Auckland and Bachelor and Masters degrees in Biochemistry from the University of Pune.
Radhakrishnan, born in Paravur in Ernakulam district of Kerala, grew up in Singapore before finally moving to New Zealand as an International student. She attended Victoria University of Wellington and graduated with a Masters degree in Development Studies.
In spite of contesting and losing this year’s elections, the three politicians – Bakshi, Parmar & Radhakrishnan will still be in the parliament as list Members of Parliament.
A list MP is a Member of Parliament who is elected from a party list rather than from a geographical constituency. Their presence in parliament is owed to the number of votes that their party won, not to votes received by the MP personally.
Bakshi who contested from Manukau East constituency in Auckland, could only secure 3969 votes against his main Labour Party rival’s 14,004.
Parmar did better in the Mt Roskill, Auckland constituency and 10,168 people cast their vote in her favour against Labour Party candidate securing 15,843.
Radhakrishnan, who could not secure enough votes in 2014 election to make it to the parliament, lost again this year and received 10,395 in Maungakiekie, Auckland seat against her rival’s 12,338 votes.
Other Indian-origin politicians who failed to even make it as list MPs are:
Baljeet Kaur, Gaurav Sharma (both Labour), Bala Beeram(National), Bhupinder Singh (ACT), Raj Singh(Green), Alok Gupta (NZ First) and Anil Sharma (NZ People’s).
Gurbir Singh is a New Zealand-based Freelance Feature Writer & Journalist.
He can be reached at: gurbir@journalist.com and you can like his Facebook page NewsViews