NHS doctor Savitha Prakash leads Reform UK campaign in Harrow, citing parallels between Farage and Modi

Savitha Prakash, an NHS doctor living in the London borough of Harrow, believes there are similarities between the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. “He’s [Modi] one of those people, like Nigel, he walks the talk. He made [a] difference to the country,” said Prakash, who chairs Reform UK’s branch in Harrow.

In particular, the 47-year-old said Farage and Modi – who have each been accused by their critics of scapegoating marginalised communities – were focused on putting the needs of the majority first.

“There was a time before [Modi] came into power that minority appeasement was normal,” she said. “Everybody believed that if you want to be in power, you have to appease the majority. Today’s Nigel speaks the same thing. He speaks about looking out for the majority.”

Prakash, a first-generation immigrant born in India, said this was one of many reasons behind the growing support among British Indians for Reform UK.

Last year, research by the 1928 Institute – a group of Oxford academics who analyse the British Indian community – showed support for Reform had risen from 4% in 2024 to 13% in 2025. “British Indian support for Reform is significantly lower than that of the general UK population. However, there is a strong upwards trend in support,” the report said.

Prakash is one example of this trend. She arrived in the UK from the southern Indian state of Mysore in 2003, aged 23, on a visitor visa to complete her medical exams. She got a job as a junior doctor in the NHS and was granted a work visa, before being granted indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and British citizenship.

“When I started working in metropolitan areas, like London or Birmingham or places where there’s lots of immigrant populations,. I slowly started seeing how things have changed in Britain,” she said. “This was not the Britain I moved into. It looks more like regressing back to how things were in India.”

Prakash is leading a group of 55 Reform candidates in Harrow hoping to be elected to the council in the local elections on 7 May.

The 2021 census found British Asians made up almost half the population in the north-west London borough, which has been seen as a Conservative stronghold in recent years. A YouGov poll published on Wednesday suggested the Conservatives could win more than twice as many votes as any other party in Harrow.

The Tory MP Bob Blackman has held the constituency seat for Harrow East since 2010 and has gained appeal by promoting pro-Modi narratives. Last year, the MP was awarded one of India’s highest civilian honours, the Padma Shri, and held an event celebrating Modi’s birthday in the House of Commons.

Prakash, previously a supporter of Boris Johnson, said the Tories “forgot what they came to power for”, specifically criticising the party’s failure to implement its plans to forcibly deport illegal migrants to Rwanda.

Prakash backs Reform’s priorities, including its plans to scrap ILR, which gives people rights and access to benefits. Instead, migrants will be forced to reapply for a visa every five years and face tougher rules including a higher salary threshold and standard of English. Critics have called the plan cruel and unfair.

“The country decides the amount of net immigration they need to have,” Prakash said. “I wouldn’t be wanting to have more than the required number of people in more than the required number of places. I don’t think we should be misunderstanding work visas as lifetime visas to convert into citizenship.”

Did Prakash have any sympathy for those who want to pursue a life in the UK to live and work, in the same way she had? “I have sympathy for these people who have been falsely shown all the dreams” of life in the UK, she said.

Speaking to residents in Harrow, it becomes clear that narratives around asylum seekers and immigration are cutting through. One person, 29, born in Gujarat and working as a waiter in central London, who did not want to be named, said: “Asylum seekers, they get to stay in hotels where the government is paying for them … Their meals are taken care of and that’s our tax money that goes there. Whereas us, who [have] a legal status coming from a different country, wanting a better life, have to pay a lot of that.”

The government says it has halved the number of hotels used to house asylum seekers and removed nearly 60,000 illegal migrants and foreign national offenders since the 2024 election.

A 28-year-old man born in Mumbai and living in Harrow, who also did not want to be named, said he was an undecided voter but was open to Reform. He criticised the Labour government for introducing stricter policies on legal immigration, including increasing the ILR qualifying period to 10 years.

To some, Prakash’s fervent support for Reform may come as a surprise. One of its MPs, Sarah Pochin, was accused of racism after she said last October: “It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.” Pochin apologised, saying the remarks had been “phrased poorly”.

The Guardian has reported on allegations from more than a dozen of Farage’s school contemporaries who recounted incidents of antisemitic and racist abuse. The Reform leader denied the allegations, saying he had never hurt anyone “with intent”.

For Prakash, the accusations of racism were attempts to “scare people”. She said: “People wouldn’t be putting me in that position if they were racist. And people wouldn’t put Zia [Yusuf, Reform’s spokesperson for home affairs] in the position that he is in if they were racist. And that explains everything. We are not racist.”

Prakash said it was ironic that the party faced accusations of racism after she said Reform activists in Harrow were subjected to abuse online, prompting some to stop using social media. This week Farage criticised Elon Musk, the owner of X, saying Reform UK candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds were being subjected to “utterly appalling abuse”.

Prakash said she tended to ignore the abuse she faced. “The amount of brainwashing each one has undergone to have this hatred towards one particular party,” she said.

Instead, Prakash is focused on the election campaign. “People are coming forward, both from old Labour voters, the staunch Conservative voters and the silent voters,” she said. “Everybody is overwhelmingly saying now: stop the appeasement. We have to put Britain first.”