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Roving Periscope: Pak-origin Humza Yousaf becomes Scotland’s First Minister

Roving Periscope: Pak-origin Humza Yousaf becomes Scotland’s First Minister

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Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: One may call it the beginning of a ‘West India Company,’ as young leaders with origins in the Indian subcontinent are now ruling the United Kingdom, and its pro-Independence part, Scotland, in what is a role reversal of the erstwhile East India Company (EIC) which ruled South Asia from 1765 to 1857.

Even the EIC is now owned by an Indian businessman, Sanjiv Mehta, who revived it in 2010.

After Indian-Briton Rishi Sunak became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in October 2022, Pakistan-origin Humza Yousaf has become Scotland’s youngest leader replacing Nicola Sturgeon as the sixth First Minister to lead the Scottish government since 1999.

Sturgeon, the first woman to hold the top position, formally stepped down on Tuesday as the longest-serving First Minister in Scotland, after more than eight years in office.

Yousaf, 37, is also the first Muslim leader of a government in western Europe, the media reported on Wednesday.

In his victory speech, he said he will make Scotland a “fairer and wealthier” place.

Scotland’s Parliament on Tuesday confirmed that he will replace Sturgeon.

On Monday, he won an SNP leadership battle (71 out of 128 votes in Parliament) to clinch the party’s top job and wowed to push for another referendum on Scottish independence, saying that the government’s priorities will be delivered more effectively when Scotland is independent of the United Kingdom.

With a strength of 129, the Scottish Parliament, which came into existence in 1999, is the devolved, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in Edinburgh.

Yousaf, who has a degree in politics from the University of Glasgow, is the son of Muslim immigrants who arrived in Scotland’s Glasgow in the 1960s. His father is from Pakistan, while his mother was born into a South Asian family in Kenya, the reports said.

In 2012, Yousaf became the first Muslim to be appointed to the Scottish government. He became a transport minister in 2016 and was fined £300 for driving a friend’s car without insurance.

Shona Robison, the current Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, will be Humza Yousaf’s deputy.

Following the Tuesday vote, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called Yousaf to congratulate him, saying he wanted to continue “working constructively with the Scottish government” to deliver on what he argued was the “people’s priorities across Scotland, including the need to halve inflation, delivering growth, and cut waiting times.”

 

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