London : Seven of the eight sitting members of Parliament (MPs) –– all of them from the Labour Party –– were re-elected in the British general election on May 6, while one, a Liberal Democrat, lost his seat. But that loss was compensated by the victory of a debutant Asian MP on a Conservative Party ticket.

Two of the winners, veteran Asian-origin Labour Party MPs on May 6 celebrated their victories and said they would continue to represent India’s interests in the House of Commons.

Piara Singh Khabra and Keith Vaz were returned from their Ealing Southall and Leicester East constituencies, respectively, even as other Labour seats tumbled across Britain.

Khabra and Vaz were among the eight Asian-origin MPs voted into Parliament in the May 5 elections, including debutante Shailesh Vara, a solicitor who was elected from the safe Conservative seat of Cambridgeshire Northwest. One Asian MP –– Liberal Democrat Parmjit Gill, who won a byelection from Leicester South last year –– lost his seat to Labour.

That all the sitting Labour MPs won was seen by analysts as creditable in an election that saw the Labour majority dip drastically. Of the 622 districts declared by about noon British time on May 6, out of a total of 646, Labor had won 353 and the Conservatives 196. The Liberal Democrats were running third with 61 seats, with smaller parties picking up the remainder.

The results marked a swing of 3.3 percent from Labor to the Conservatives, with the BBC predicting a margin of victory of 66 seats for Blair, down from 167 in 2001.

Khabra, from Hoshiarpur in India’s Punjab state, won with a slightly reduced majority of 11,442 but an increased proportion of the vote. However, Vaz, a former junior minister of Goan origin, managed to increase both his winning margin and the proportion of votes –– a remarkable achievement in a difficult election for Labour.

Vara became the first Asian vice-chairman of the Conservative party in 2001 and is the first ethnic Gujarati to be elected to the British Parliament. He came to Britain from Uganda as a boy in 1972 and this was his third attempt at becoming an MP. The others to be re-elected were: Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr), Marsha Singh (Bradford West), Mohammad Sarwar (Glasgow Central), Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester) and Dr Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East).

Speaking to Indo-Asian News Service, Khabra and Vaz exuded confidence and pledged support to India. “I would very much hope that the government will treat India on par with China,” Khabra said. “Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer) has already shown his interest in China. I hope there will be further interest by the Government in India, which is emerging as a major global economic and trading power.”

Vaz, whose constituency includes a large number of Indian-origin Britons, said he was “absolutely delighted” at his win, “especially after the results of the Labour Party.” “I’ve been an MP for 18 years and I’ve always been a great friend of India. I hope the relationship between India and Britain will grow faster during Britain’s coming presidency of the European Union,” Vaz said.

About 78 Asian would-be MPs were in the fray –– a record for Britain, where ethnic minorities form 6 percent of the population. The number of candidates was higher at 113 when African and Caribbean candidates were counted.

But campaigners for ethnic minorities had feared that only a handful of the candidates would actually end up winning a place on the coveted antique green leather benches of the House of Commons, Britain’s lower house of Parliament.

The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties had fielded 28 Asian candidates each, while the ruling Labour Party fielded 22. If you consider African and Caribbean-origin candidates, the numbers were up at 41 for the Conservatives, 40 for the Liberal Democrats and 32 for Labour.