This General Election, the Northern Ireland (NI) has got its first ever Sikh prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC).
Amandeep Singh Bhogal at Upper Bann is the only man of Indian origin fighting this election in Northern Ireland.
Conservative party candidate, Bhogal has been a major campaigner for UK to move out of the European Union and get closer to India.
Speaking about his prospects in the election, Bhogal told the Times of India that he wants to end sectarian politics in NI with the slogan 'job counts not head counts'.
31 years old Bhogal was adopted only nine days ago as a Conservative Party candidate. He reportedly said "I have a very interesting Irish Link. I was born in Jalandhar in 1984. It was in the cantonment in Jalandhar that the Irish Connaught Regimen was posted. They set up the first free Irish government in exile in Jalandhar".
"I have long advocated that UK needs to get closer to India as we have more in common to the Indian Union than the European Union. Our shared English language, the 1.8 million strong British Indian diaspora living in UK and the fact that both India and UK are the world's largest and oldest democracies respectively are the three main reasons why UK must focus more on building closer ties with India and the Commonwealth rather than the EU".
This is the first time Bhogal is standing for the general election. He has earlier stood for three elections - two local and one for the position of the London Assembly MLA.
Bhogal knows that the fight will be tough this election but is confident that his party has a long term electoral plan for NI and wants to build base for the 2020 election.
Businessman and former diplomat Amandeep Singh Bhogal had previously put himself forward as the Conservative Party candidate for a successor to Laura Sandys in Thanet South, who will step down in this election. The father-of-two has also been chairman of the Bexley Conservative Association and formerly campaigned across Kent in various elections.
