Sadiq Khan wins record third term as Mayor of London
London, May 4: Sadiq Khan on Saturday registered a decisive victory to secure a record third term as Mayor of London, as the local election results from England and Wales continued to reflect a strong swing in favour of the Opposition Labour Party.
The 53-year-old Pakistani-origin Labour candidate secured a massive 10,88,225 votes with a 43.8 per cent vote share, well ahead of the Conservative candidate Susan Hall’s 8,12,397 votes – an impressive majority of over 2,75,000.
Delhi-born businessman Tarun Ghulati, contesting as an independent candidate among a total 13 mayoral candidates, secured 24,702 votes and came in tenth in the overall tally.
“I am beyond humbled right now and express my deep gratitude to my fellow Londoners, and make this pledge to you: I promise to repay the trust you’ve placed in me by working tirelessly to deliver the fairer, safer and greener, London you deserve,” said Khan in his acceptance speech from the London mayoral headquarters of City Hall.
“It’s been a difficult few months, we faced a campaign of non-stop negativity, but I couldn’t be more proud that we answered fear mongering with facts, hate with hope, and attempts to divide with efforts to unite. We ran a campaign that was in keeping with the spirit and values of this great city, a city that regards our diversity, not as a weakness, but an almighty strength,” he said, taking aim at some of the rhetoric from the Opposition.
“It is truly an honour to be elected for a third term and to do so with record levels of support from Londoners, with an increased margin of victory. But today’s not about making history, it’s about shaping our future,” he added.
Earlier, Khan’s own camp and the BBC had already called the election in favour of Khan as borough-wise results poured in for the UK capital to show that he was on course to beat his nearest Conservative Party rival, Susan Hall, with a strong voter swing in favour of Labour.
Significantly, the UK capital’s Muslim population did not seem to have punished the Labour Mayor for his party’s failure to strongly condemn Israel over the Gaza conflict in the same way as other parts of the country had. Some of Khan’s controversial policies, such as the high costs on drivers of vehicles falling under the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) tariff bracket as part of his anti-pollution drive for London, also did not result in a major dent in his overall popularity.
“Sadiq Khan was absolutely the right candidate. He has got two terms of delivery behind him and I am confident that he has got another term of delivery in front of him,” said Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer just before the results were declared.
The role of London Mayor represents the 8.9 million people living across the capital and has a budget of GBP 20.4 billion and is responsible for Transport for London (TfL) and has some control over roads, policing and housing in the city. Londoners also went to the polls on Thursday to vote for one of 14 local representatives on the London Assembly and 11 London wide Assembly members who hold the Mayor of London accountable.
The Labour Party continued its winning streak in most of the local elections, seen as reflective of the electorate’s mood ahead of a general election expected later this year. Popular Labour incumbent Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham was re-elected with 63 per cent of the vote, who committed to get right back to work to see through his transport reforms and called for more powers over welfare and housing.
“I am ready to fight harder than I have ever fought for anything before, for a Greater Manchester where people can live free from the fear of debt, hunger and eviction, and where everyone is set up to benefit from the growing success of our city region today,” said Burnham in his victory speech.
Earlier, the party won the Liverpool City Region and South Yorkshire mayoral races, the North East mayoralty, as well as the brand-new mayoralty of East Midlands.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was handed a glimmer of hope on Friday with Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen retaining the seat for the Conservatives, will be hoping Birmingham’s Tory Mayor Andy Street is able to win a contest that has been on a knife-edge between the Conservatives and Labour – with a recount ordered due to the results being too close to call.
However, any immediate manoeuvres by the Tory rebels to try and challenge Sunak’s leadership seems to have been averted for the moment as there isn’t much appetite for another upheaval in the party ranks.
An analysis of the local election results by BBC’s polling expert Professor John Curtice suggests that Labour is now in pole position to win the general election, with the local elections extrapolated to a national level giving the Opposition a comfortable lead.
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Indigo cancels 67 flights from multiple airports due to bad weather, operational issues
Mumbai (PTI): Domestic carrier IndiGo on Thursday cancelled 67 flights from multiple airports due to "forecasted" bad weather and operational reasons, according to the airline's website.
Of the 67 cancelled flights, only four were for operational reasons, and the rest were due to "forecasted" bad weather at various airports, including Agartala, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Varanasi, Bengaluru, among others, as per the website.
Aviation regulator, DGCA, has announced the period between December 10 and February 10 next year as the official fog window this winter.
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As part of the DGCA fog operations (CAT-IIIB) norms, airlines have to mandatorily roster pilots who are trained to operate in low-visibility conditions, as well as deploy a CAT-IIIB-compliant aircraft fleet for such operations.
Category-III is an advanced navigation system that empowers an aircraft to land under foggy conditions.
Category-III-A is a precision instrument approach and landing that enables a plane to land with a runway visual range (RVR) of 200 metres, while Category-III-B helps in landing with an RVR of under 50 metres.
IndiGo, whose operations are under DGCA monitoring after the cancellations of thousands of flights early this month, is already operating a curtailed schedule in compliance with the government's order.
Under its original winter flight schedule, the airline was permitted to operate 15,014 domestic flights per week, or about 2,144 flights per day, roughly six per cent higher than the 14,158 weekly flights it operated during the summer schedule of 2025.
However, after the massive disruptions, which saw the airline cancelling 1,600 flights on a single day on account of new rest norms for pilots, which allow more rest to the pilots, the government cut down the airline's domestic flight schedule by 10 per cent or 214 flights per day.
As a result of that, IndiGo can't operate more than 1,930 flights per day on domestic routes under its current winter schedule.
The Rahul Bhatia-controlled airline cancelled thousands of flights between December 1 and December 9 on account of a lack of proper planning, and crew shortage in implementing the new set of regulations for pilots' duty period and rest, which were put in place from November 1, thereby causing severe hardships to lakhs of air travellers.
Following this, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) formed a four-member panel, comprising Joint DG Sanjay Brahamane, Deputy Director General Amit Gupta, senior Flight Operations Inspector Kapil Manglik, and FOI Lokesh Rampal, with a mandate to identify the root causes of widespread operational disruptions at the Rahul Bhatia-controlled domestic carrier.
The panel, which has already grilled IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and Chief Operating Officer Isidre Porqueras as part of its probe, is expected to submit its report by this week.
Meanwhile, IndiGo, in a travel advisory on X, said, "Low visibility and fog over Bangalore has impacted flight schedule. We are keeping a close watch on the weather and doing our best where you need to be safely, smoothly".
Reacting to the advisory, an aggrieved passenger, in an X post, said, "My flight on December 20 from Bhubaneswar to Ahmedabad got delayed for more than five hours, and today my return flight from Ahmedabad to Bhubaneswar also got delayed more than three hours with the same excuse as bad weather. I am travelling with my senior citizen parents, and this delay is not acceptable. Need proper explanation, along with compensation".
