London:

Sadiq Khan, who was Saturday re-elected for a record third term as London mayor, rose from humble roots to spar with world leaders and bring consequential change to the British capital.

The 53-year-old Labour party politician — a former human rights lawyer brought up on a London public housing complex — comfortably defeated Conservative rival Susan Hall for a third stint at City Hall.

He now overtakes predecessor Boris Johnson as the longest-serving holder of the post, which notably has powers over the emergency services, transport and planning in the city of nearly nine million.

Victory continues a remarkable journey for the Pakistani immigrant bus driver’s son, who became the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when initially elected in 2016.

As mayor, he has made a name for himself as a vocal critic of Brexit and successive Conservative prime ministers, including Johnson, as well as for a feud with former US president Donald Trump.

The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words after Khan criticised Trump’s travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.

Trump then accused Khan of doing a “very bad job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and a “national disgrace”.

The mayor in turn allowed an infamous blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a nappy to fly above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.

“He once called me a stone cold loser. Only one of us is a loser, and it’s not me,” Khan told AFP during his 2021 campaign.

Knife crime

But Khan’s own tenure has not been without its controversies, particularly over last year’s expansion of an Ultra-Low Emission Zone into the largest pollution-charging scheme in the world.

The daily toll on the most-polluting vehicles prompted a fierce backlash in outer boroughs of Greater London, with anger at the extra financial burden during a cost-of-living crisis.

Khan has also been criticised for failing to get to grips with high levels of knife crime and since last year, his handling of large weekly pro-Palestinian protests.

Born in London in 1970 to parents who had recently arrived from Pakistan, Khan was the fifth child out of seven brothers and one sister.

He grew up in public housing in Tooting, an ethnically mixed residential area in south London, and slept in a bunk-bed until he was 24.

His modest background plays well in a city that is proud of its diversity and loves a self-made success story.

Khan still regularly recalls how his father drove one of London’s famous red buses, and his mother was a seamstress.

He is a handy boxer, having learnt the sport to defend himself in the streets against those who hurled racist abuse at him, and two of his brothers are boxing coaches.

He initially wanted to become a dentist, but a teacher spotted his gift for verbal sparring and directed him towards law.

He gained a law degree from the University of North London and started out as a trainee lawyer in 1994 at the Christian Fisher legal firm, where he was eventually made a partner.

He specialised in human rights, and spent three years chairing the civil liberties campaign group Liberty.

He represented Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam movement, and Babar Ahmad, a mosque acquaintance who was jailed in the United States after admitting providing support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Higher ambitions?

Khan joined Labour aged 15 when Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp.

He became a local councillor for Tooting in the Conservative-dominated Wandsworth local borough in 1994, and its member of parliament in 2005.

He still lives in the area with his lawyer wife Saadiya and their two teenage daughters.

Labour prime minister Gordon Brown made him communities minister in 2008 and he later served as transport minister, becoming the first Muslim minister to attend Cabinet meetings.

In parliament, he voted for gay marriage — which earned him death threats.

As mayor, he vowed to focus on providing affordable homes for Londoners and freezing transport fares, but — like many in power around the world — saw his agenda engulfed by the pandemic.

He is London’s third mayor after Labour’s Ken Livingstone (2000-2008) and Johnson (2008-2016), with widespread speculation he could eventually try to follow in his predecessor and become prime minister.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Indian-origin candidate for London Mayor Tarun Ghulati addresses a gathering in London.
| Photo Credit: PTI

As London goes to the polls on May 2 to elect a mayor, Delhi-born Tarun Ghulati is among the 14 candidates for voters to choose from. Mr. Ghulati, an investment banker and strategic advisor, is running as an independent to “encourage the free flow of ideas and policies without party ideology and bias”.

“People don’t know whether to heat or eat,” Mr Ghulati told The Hindu on the eve of the election, describing the cost of living crisis. He hopes to bring his finance background to create funds for London.

Also read | Crime and cost of living left, right and centre as London votes for a mayor

As part of his plan, Mr. Ghulati said he would want more “bobbies (police) on the beat” .

“But of the right kind,” he adds, meaning they should come from diverse backgrounds to understand the cultural nuances of the communities they police. Not unlike the Conservative candidate Susan Hall, he wants more localized policing, by increasing the number of police booths in the city.

Like other candidates, Mr. Ghulati’s formula for making housing more affordable in London includes rent-control laws in areas undergoing gentrification and changing land-use regulations. He also wants to reduce the amount of congestion charges paid by car drivers using London roads.

 “You don’t need politicians who blurred the vision for London and have failed London, “ Mr. Ghulati said, when asked if London was read for a foreign-born Mayor.

“I speak several languages and and understand the cultural sensitivity of people,” Mr. Ghulati said adding that his Indian upbringing taught him to believe in the notion of the world as one family, which he described as ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, a Sanskrit phrase also used by the Modi government in its foreign policy references.

Emphasizing that he was committed to all cultures and communities, Mr. Ghulati voiced his support for civilians in Gaza during his call with The Hindu, describing the bombarding of Gaza as “carnage and genocide”.

“I’ve been asking the leaders to go off to the Rafah crossing or Gaza and see the bodies and the mass graves, just as they went to Ukraine,” he said. The Israel-Palestine issue has become a point of tension in London, with near-weekly protests and counter-protests, as in many other world capitals.

“I want all Londoners to live in harmony,” Mr. Ghulati said. He also dismissed the opinion polls, which show incumbent Sadiq Khan well in the lead, followed by Ms. Hall and the candidates from the Lib Dem Party (Rob Blackie) and Green Party (Zoë Garbett).