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Who is Rishi Sunak?
Rishi Sunak scripted history when he was appointed by King Charles III as Britain's first Indian-origin Prime Minister after being elected unopposed as the new leader of the governing Conservative Party on Diwali. 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.
Life and education
Life and education
Sunak was born in Southampton on May 12, 1980, to Indian parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak in East Africa. His grandparents were born in British India's Punjab province. 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
The Yorkshire MP married Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys founder NR Narayan Murthy, in 2009 and has two children with her.
Career
Sunak worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as an analyst between 2001 and 2004.
He has also worked for the hedge fund management firm The Children's Investment Fund Management and became a partner of the company in 2006. He joined Theleme Partners in 2010.
Sunak was also a director of Catamaran Ventures, an investment firm owned by his father-in-law.
He was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks) in October 2014. He was the head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit of the think tank Policy Exchange in the same year.
In 2015, he became MP from the constituency with a majority of 36.2 per cent votes.
From 2015-17, he was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.
Sunak was re-elected from his seat in the 2017 general elections. From 2018 to 2019, he served as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government.
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.
Sunak, on July 5, 2022, resigned from his post along with minister Sajid Javid, expressing a lack of confidence in Johnson's leadership.
Later that week, Sunak announced his prime ministerial bid, and topped the first two rounds of the race within the Conservative party.