India-born entrepreneur Rajesh Agrawal has been re-appointed as London’s Deputy Mayor for Business by Mayor Sadiq Khan after he won a second term in local elections last week.
As Khan made “jobs, jobs, jobs” a top priority for his next term in office, Agrawal also committed himself to the agenda on Thursday and made a pledge to focus on a “fairer and greener recovery” for the UK capital from the coronavirus pandemic.
“I want to thank all Londoners for giving a decisive mandate to this administration. Past five years have been hugely challenging for London with uncertainty caused by Brexit and the biggest health, social and economic crisis caused by coronavirus,” said 43-year-old Indore-born Agrawal.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated economic and social inequalities in our society. Young people, women and people from ethnic minorities have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic. As we work towards recovering from this crisis, our top priority is ‘jobs, jobs & jobs’. We want a fairer and greener recovery,” he said.
Agrawal was first appointed in the role in 2016 and has since driven the business and economic brief from London’s City Hall through the crisis caused by Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. He has also engaged with Indian interlocutors to increase UK-India trade.
Khan has also retained Shirley Rodrigues as the deputy mayor for environment and energy. Rodrigues was born in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and her family has roots in the villages of Siolim and Aldona in the coastal Indian state of Goa. The family migrated to Britain in 1967.