Rishi Sunak was appointed United Kingdom’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister on October 25 by King Charles III.
Key points
- Mr Sunak is the fourth consecutive prime minister – after Theresa May, Mr Johnson and Ms Truss – to take the role of leader without a general election, although Mrs May and Mr Johnson both won general elections as PMs in 2017 and 2019.
- The 42-year-old former Chancellor of Exchequer, a devout Hindu, is the youngest British prime minister in 210 years.
- He is also the first Hindu Prime Minister of Indian heritage in the UK.
- Sunak has been a member of the Conservative Party for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.
- Sunak was born in Southampton on May 12, 1980, to Indian parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak.
- His grandparents were born in British India’s Punjab province.
- His father Yashvir was born and raised in Kenya and his mother Usha was born in Tanganyika, a former sovereign state now part of present-day Tanzania. They migrated to the UK from East Africa in the 1960s with their children.
- Sunak studied at Winchester College and read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 2001.
- The 42-year-old also did his MBA as a Fulbright Scholar from Standford University in 2006
- Sunak married Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys founder NR Narayan Murthy, in 2009 and has two children with her.
- Sunak worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as an analyst between 2001 and 2004.
- He was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks) in October 2014.
- In 2015, he became MP from the constituency with a majority of 36.2 per cent votes.
- In 2019, he was appointed Chief Secretary to Treasury by Boris Johnson and also became a member of the Privy Council. He was re-elected in the 2019 general election.
