Patel

Patel is a surname representing a caste of village leaders. The 'Patel' of a village in the mid-1500-1900 state of Gujarat, would be a member of the village committee who would help represent the whole village's views to the local council and take the lead in resolving problems and implementing ideas. They would do this by working closely alongside the village pandit and other members of the 'Brahmin' Community mainly found in Gujarat, India but also across all parts of India such as Telangana and Pakistan. It is currently also used as a surname like Patidar or Bhakta, or replaced by an ancestorial name.

Etymology

The term patel derives from the word Patidar, "Pat," which refers to a piece of land. Consequently, the name "Patel" referred to one who was tasked with taking care of or farming that piece of land or normally called for headman of community

Distribution

The name Patel is found primarily in the Indian state of Gujarat, as well as the states of Uttar Pradesh,Rajasthan, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and in some eastern part of Madhya Pradesh; and metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Kanpur,Banda and Delhi.

Priti Patel

Priti Patel (born 29 March 1972) is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Witham constituency in Essex since 2010. Appointed Minister of State for Employment attending Cabinet on 11 May 2015, and a member of the Public Administration Select Committee, she is regarded as being ideologically on her party's right-wing.

Patel was born in London to a Ugandan Indian migrant family. Educated at Keele University and the University of Essex, she was initially involved with the Referendum Party before switching allegiance to the Conservatives. She contested Nottingham North unsuccessfully at the 2005 general election before, under David Cameron's leadership, being recommended for the Party's "A-List" of prospective candidates; she was elected Conservative MP for the seat of Witham at the 2010 general election.

A sometimes outspoken figure, Patel has been criticised by political opponents for defending the tobacco and alcohol industries, and for suggesting that some British workers are lazy in an economic treatise.

Nick Clegg

Nicholas William Peter Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is a British Liberal Democrats politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Lord President of the Council from 2010 to 2015 in the Cameron coalition ministry. Clegg was the Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015 and has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam since 2005.

Clegg was educated at the University of Cambridge, the University of Minnesota, and the College of Europe, before becoming a journalist for the Financial Times and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). In 2007 he was elected Leader of the Liberal Democrats, leading his party into a coalition government with the Conservative Party in 2010. In 2015, he resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats following that year's general election at which his party was decisively defeated and lost 48 MPs, moving from 56 MPs to eight.

Clegg is a fluent speaker of five European languages.

Early life and family

Clegg was born in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, the third of four children of Nicholas Peter Clegg, CBE, chairman of United Trust Bank and a former trustee of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation (where Ken Clarke was an adviser). Clegg descends from "Russia's old Tsarist nobility": his paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, Baroness von Smolensk, was a Russian noblewoman, and the granddaughter of Attorney-General of the Russian senate, Ignatiy Platonovich Zakrevsky. His English grandfather was Hugh Anthony Clegg, editor of the British Medical Journal for 35 years.