Party leaders and candidates are in a last-minute scramble for votes as Thursday’s United Kingdom general election is expected to be too close to call with opinion polls indicating just a wafer-thin lead for Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives.
As opinion polls continue to reflect a knife-edge election, Indian-origin voters are set to play their most proactive role in British electoral history this time.
With just hours to go before polling booths will open across the UK, Cameron’s ruling Conservative Party is ahead only by a sliver at 34 per cent and Opposition Labour led by Ed Miliband at 33 per cent.
Nick Clegg-led Liberal Democrats, who formed part of the coalition government after the last 2010 elections, have slipped in popularity to fourth position behind the anti-immigration UK Independence Party.
An estimated 615,000 migrant Indian votes by virtue of their Commonwealth citizenship coupled with an Indian Diaspora population of an estimated 1.5 million hold a major sway among the 45 million eligible voters in the 2015 election, dubbed as the “most unpredictable” in history.
The last elections had set a new record with eight Indian-origin candidates, including two women, being elected to the British Parliament.
Prominent among the Indian-origin candidates are some long-serving MPs like Labour’s Keith Vaz, whose Leicester East seat looks pretty safe this time as well. His sister Valerie Vaz is defending her Walsall South seat.
Virendra Sharma is another Labour veteran who is expected to sail through in Ealing Southall and Seema Malhotra from Feltham and Heston is also popular.
On the Tory side, there is a new brother-sister duo of Arun and Suria Photay who are contesting from Birmingham Yardley and Wolverhampton South East respectively.
Priti Patel, who has played her part in the Cabinet and as Cameron’s Indian Diaspora Champion, is likely to retain her Witham seat in Essex and first-timer Rishi Sunak, son-in-law of Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy is expected to make history from Richmond.
The Conservatives are leading the charge in terms of Indian-origin candidates with 17, followed by Labour and Lib Dems at 14 each.
According to electoral rules in the UK, parties voluntarily stop campaigning on the day of polling hence it is only on Wednesday each candidate has to make their last voting pleas.
While Cameron’s message is that “the country is stronger than it was five years ago but there is more to do,” Miliband urged people to vote “to reward hard work in our country again”.
Clegg is going with a “stability and decency” slogan and warned of another election in a few months unless people vote more decisively.
The British Parliament is made up of 650 seats -- 533 constituencies in England, 59 in Scotland, 40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland -- with 326 required for a majority.
In the last elections in 2010, which threw up a hung parliament, the Tories had 307 and Labour 258. The Tories turned to the Lib-Dems with their 57 to form a government after a record five-day deliberation period.
This time poll pundits are predicting an even more protracted period of discussions as no party is expected to command a clear majority following the results, which are expected by early Friday morning.
Exit polls will begin pouring in soon after the official end of voting on Thursday and the constituency of Sunderland is expected to maintain its lead as the first to declare, at times just an hour after polling by 11 pm.
Barring tight results and numerous recounts, seats in Northumberland, Warwick and Cornwall are likely to be the last to declare early on Friday.
While most voters will vote at one of the 40,000 polling booths around the country, a significant minority of voters will have opted to vote by post and already sent their choice a few weeks ago.
Among some of the latest rules for polling day, the Electoral Commission has restricted social media and tweeting from inside the polling booths.
Technically, even Queen Elizabeth II could vote but the royal family chooses not to do so as it is considered unconstitutional not to remain politically neutral.
