London: Tory leadership contender and British Prime Minister hopeful Rishi Sunak on Thursday visited a temple to celebrate popular Hindu festival Janmashtami. The former British Chancellor was accompanied by his wife Akshata Murthy during his visit to Bhaktivedanta Manor temple.


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"Today I visited the Bhaktivedanta Manor temple with my wife Akshata to celebrate Janmashtami, in advance of the popular Hindu festival celebrating Lord Krishna’s birthday," he wrote on Twitter while sharing a picture of himself in the temple. 



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The Indian-origin leader, who is in the race to become the next British Prime Minister, is a proud practitioner of the Hindu faith. The former Minister, who quit Boris Johnson’s government and is now trailing UK Foreign secretary Liz Truss in most surveys, earlier said that racism is not a factor in his party membership’s decision to vote for the next party leader.


A recent survey of Tory voters said Truss has consolidated her lead over former chancellor Rishi Sunak in the race to become the British Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. The latest Conservative Home survey released on Wednesday has produced much the same result as it did when it was last published earlier this month.


"Then, Rishi Sunak was on 26 per cent, Liz Truss was on 58 per cent and 12 per cent were undecided. Now, those figures are 28 per cent, 60 per cent and nine per cent. We have rolled Neither and Won`t Vote into the same column this time round," said the Conservative Home survey of 961 party members, who either already have or will be casting their ballots in the leadership race.


Once members who fall under the "don’t know" category are equally distributed between the two contenders, Truss maintains a 32-point lead over the former Minister Sunak. "If our don’t knows are divided evenly between the two candidates, an exercise we carried out last time, Truss goes up to 64 per cent and Sunak to 32 per cent- and so maintains the 32 point lead she had last time round. YouGov’s last poll, which closed on August 2nd, the day our last survey went out, gave her a 38-point lead. Opinium`s latest poll, conducted last week, gave her a 22-point lead," the survey added.


The sum of Opinium, YouGov and Conservative Home surveys is that Truss is set to win by a margin roughly between 70-30 and 60-40- perhaps a bit higher, perhaps a bit lower.