New Zealand First’s sole Indian-origin candidate, Mahesh Bindra, has withdrawn his candidacy from the Panmure-\u014ct\u0101huhu electorate in the upcoming general election, citing personal reasons.<\/p>\n
“I have withdrawn my candidacy from this year’s elections due to some personal reasons,” Bindra said.<\/p>\n
He told RNZ\u00a0he was still a member of New Zealand First.<\/p>\n
Bindra is the only lawmaker of Asian descent in the party’s history.<\/p>\n
His decision to pull out of the electoral race comes just days after New Zealand First released its party list for the upcoming election.<\/p>\n
Bindra’s name was notably absent from the list unveiled on Saturday\u00a0and his profile has been removed from the New Zealand First\u00a0website.<\/p>\n
A New Zealand First\u00a0spokesperson confirmed\u00a0Bindra had asked the party to withdraw his candidacy for personal reasons.<\/p>\n
“There are other previous MPs who are going through the same process, and they are all very supportive of the party,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Bindra has been a member of New Zealand First since 2006, representing the party as a list MP from 2014 to 2017.<\/p>\n
In 2017, he was placed 10th on the party list but failed to retain a seat in parliament.<\/p>\n
In 2020, Bindra dropped to 12th on the list and the party failed to meet\u00a0the 5 percent threshold needed to secure any seats in parliament.<\/p>\n
According to recent polls, New Zealand First is currently hovering around the 5 percent threshold.<\/p>\n
RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand First’s sole Indian-origin candidate, Mahesh Bindra, has withdrawn his candidacy from the Panmure-\u014ct\u0101huhu electorate in the upcoming general election, citing personal reasons. “I have withdrawn my candidacy from this year’s elections due to some personal reasons,” Bindra said. He told RNZ\u00a0he was still a member of New Zealand First. Bindra is the only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7893,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7891\/revisions\/7893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}