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Melbourne, Nov 19. More than 50 Indian-origin candidates across all political
parties and independents are in fray tor the November 26 Victoria state election in
Australia.
Many of these candidates are from the fledging New Democrats party, which was
launched in early October by Kaushaliya Vaghela, the first Indian-born member of the
Victorian parliament.
Led by Premier Daniel Andrews, the incumbent Labor government is seeking a third
successive four-year term, and will be challenged by the Liberals, which has under 10
Indian-origin candidates, media reports said.
In order to form a government in the state, a party must win A5 seats in the lower
house.
According to advocacy group Centre of Multicultural Political Engagement, Literacy and
Leadership, the Liberal party ran the highest number of candidates of colour in the May
2022 federal election.
Preet Singh, an Indian-origin Liberal candidate for Tarneit, a suburb in Melbourne,
Victoria, says that if elected, he would work tor better transport and improve roads in
the area.
Singh will be competing against Dylan Wight from the Labor party, Jaydeep Patel from
the New Democrats, Clare Miller from the Australian Greens.
Raja Reddy, Liberal candidate tor Laverton, who works as a migration agent, faces
Michael Wirth from the Labor Party, Gurneet Soni from the New Democrats, and
Braishna Durzada trom the Austra|ian Greens Party.
Some other Indian-origin candidates include Deepak Bansal (Western Metropolitan
Region), Brijesh Chopra (Northern Victoria Region), Shwetali Sawant (Point Cook),
Maniunatha Hanumantharyappa (South Eastern Metropolitan Region), Jagdeep Singh
(Cranbourne), Manish Patel (Corio), Sahil Tomar (Bundoora), Bikram Singh (Kalkallo),
George Palackalody (Melbourne) and Gurdawar Singh (Thomastown).
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2021 census, 783958 persons
declared their ancestry as Indian, constituting 3.1 per cent of the country’s population.
Migration from India to Australia increased dramatically between 2006 and 2016,
more than doubling the numbers of the India-born population, and according to
estimates, India-born Australians are expected to outnumber Chinese-born Australians
by 2031 , reaching 1.4 million.
The postal voting to elect the 60th Parliament of Victoria began on November 2.
Though the state has compulsory voting, the voter turnout was just over 90 per cent in
the A2018 election.
This is the first time the Australian state is going to the polls since the pandemic began.
