M A I N   N E W S

Keith Vaz sacked

London, June 11
Keith Vaz, Minister for Europe and the sole Asian representative in the British Cabinet, who was dogged by allegations of financial irregularities, was tonight sacked from the Cabinet.

Fortyfour-year-old Vaz, who was re-elected from the Leicester East constituency to the House of Commons in last week's general elections, was removed from the Cabinet along with Sports Minister Kate Hoey.

Vaz, whose sacking was widely expected following his recent ill-health and persistent allegations about his financial conduct, is replaced by Peter Hain, who was Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the outgoing ministry.

Vaz's return to the backbenches was confirmed just hours after he was released from Leicester Royal Infirmary, where he had spent the weekend recovering from an infection.

Hoey was known to have clashed with her boss Culture Secretary Chris Smith and her predecessor as Sports Minister Tony Banks. 

Former Pensions Minister Jeff Rooker, who retired at the election to take a place in the Lords, has been made Minister of State at the Home Office, with responsibility for the controversial asylum issue.

Meanwhile, International Development Minister Chris Mullin has left the government at his own request.

Keith Vaz was a politically dexterous high-flyer eventually undone by one of his biggest attributes — his formidable contacts book.

In charge of one of the most important briefs outside Cabinet level, he was Britain's leading Asian politician, the first elected to the House of Commons since 1929 and its first ever Asian minister.

Like many of his Labour Party colleagues, he had moved from the far Left to the political Centre ground in a matter of a decade.

Vaz, a Goanese Catholic, was born in Aden in 1956, where his father was a correspondent for the Times of India. They moved to London when he was nine. 

He studied law at Cambridge University, finishing with first-class honours, before qualifying as a solicitor and then a barrister.

Failed attempts to get into Parliament persuaded him to back proposals for "black sections" within the Labour Party, but he turned against the idea when he finally made it to Westminster in 1987.

It was then that he won a seat in Leicester, in Central England, in an area with a large proportion of Asian voters, mainly Gujratis.

He made his mark in Parliament in support of people, including some in his own constituency, who lost money in the catastrophic 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). — PTI, AFP