BRITISH Asians donated more than £900,000 to political parties in the first quarter of 2026, as property developer Kamal Pankhania and investor Navroz Udwadia led the way, giving £250,000 each to the Conservatives and Reform UK, respectively.
Investment banker Malik Karim was also a top donor, while Labour’s biggest Asian backer was travel businessman Harish Sodha, Electoral Commission data revealed last Thursday (4).
The donations, covering January to March, were part of a record £24.7 million raised by all parties nationally in the period, nearly double the £13.7m recorded in the same quarter last year.
Pankhania is the chief executive of Westcombe Group, a family-owned property business best known for restoring historic grade I and grade II listed buildings into homes and hotels.
Pankhania’s family firm, Westcombe Developments Limited, gave a further £15,000 to the Tories in March. Reform UK’s leading Asian donor was Udwadia, an Indian investor and cofounder of Alpha Wave Global, an alternative asset manager with investments in companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and AI firms Anthropic and OpenAI.
Malik KarimEastern Eye
His company is registered offshore in the Cayman Islands. A former Goldman Sachs banker, Udwadia gave £250,000 in March, his first ever recorded UK political donation, making him Reform’s fourth largest donor of the year.
London-based real estate firm Goodcare Ltd, led by Dr Arujuna Sivananthanan and Karthika Sivananthanan, donated £25,000 to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in January.
Sudhir ChoudhrieEastern Eye
Labour’s biggest Asian backer was Sodha, who gave £120,000 across two donations. Sodha fled Uganda during Idi Amin’s 1972 expulsion of Asians and built a career in travel services, co-founding Key Travel before establishing Diversity Travel, which arranges travel for NGOs and charities operating in difficult regions. He is also a director of City Eco Hotel Limited.
Businessman and property developer, Amin Hemani, donated £30,000 through Scottish Labour. He is a major shareholder in Fieldgate Properties (UK) Limited, a London-based property development company established in 2004 that operates out of the City of London.
Among company donors to Labour, Playscan Limited, a Birmingham-based building development firm whose directors include Fazal Ahmed and Zahir Sahiad Ahmed, gave £50,000 in January.
Rocktel Services Limited, a real estate and management consultancy whose directors include Karim Paul Nakhla and Susan Elizabeth Nakhla, donated £20,000 across two payments.
Dinesh DhamijaEastern Eye
Tory backer Karim donated £69,000 to the party. He founded City firm Fenchurch Advisory, which specialises in mergers and acquisitions advice to the financial services industry. Karim arrived in the UK as a refugee from Uganda in 1972 following Idi Amin’s forced expulsion of Asians and later became the first person of colour to serve as Tory treasurer.
Smaller Conservative donations came from Abdul Laskar, who gave £7,000 to the Watford association, and Pramod Nayak, who donated £5,000 to the Harlow branch.
The Liberal Democrats’ most active Asian donor was Sudhir Choudhrie, an India-born London-based businessman with interests in healthcare, aviation and hospitality, who gave £22,499 across five donations. He has backed the party financially since 2004, with personal and company donations now exceeding £1.5 million. He serves as the party leader’s adviser on India.
Commercial property veteran Ramesh Dewan donated £7,931 across two payments. Over a four-decade career he has been involved in the development of more than 40 million square feet of UK commercial property.
Harish SodhaLinkedIn
He chairs the Liberal Democrat Future Fund and Legacy Society and runs the Dewan Foundation, which supports women-led micro-enterprises to combat poverty. Other Lib Dem donors included ebookers founder Dinesh Dhamija, who gave £2,500 to the party, and Reetendra N Banerji, who donated £3,000.
One&Only Asset Management Ltd, a Bexley-based property firm directed by Afshan Ahmad and Aijaz Ahmad, gave £10,000 to the party’s Kingston Borough association. According to Electoral Commission, Reform raised more than Labour and the Tories combined in the first quarter of 2026, pulling in £9.2m against Labour’s £3.9m and the Tories’ £4m. Farage’s party collected more than twice what Labour or Conservatives managed between January and March.
“Political parties accepted £24.7m in donations in the first quarter of 2026. The UK political finance system has high levels of transparency, and we know that voters care about where parties get their money from. This publication is a key part of delivering this information to voters,” said Jackie Killeen, director of electoral administration and regulation at the Electoral Commission, said:
“However, we know there are parts of the system that need strengthening, and we have highlighted the need for changes. The UK government’s proposed reforms to the political finance regime in the Representation of the People Bill could strengthen donation controls and help ensure voters have confidence in the political finance system. We will continue to work with the government.”
The pair with supporters who helped them reach the finish line Minreet Kaur
