LONDON: The Labour Party has announced a review into why the Covid-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds in Britain but has bizarrely excluded Hindus from the roundtable to launch it, though Sikhs and Muslims were invited.The leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, invited representatives from the Muslim Council of Britain, Operation Black Vote, the Sikh Federation (UK), the Sikh Network and the Jewish Medical Association to take part in its digital roundtable on Friday to kick off the review. The Hindu Forum of Britain and Hindu Council UK , the two largest umbrella organisations that represent Hindus in Britain, confirmed to TOI that they had were not invited."If you are discussing the impact of Covid-19 on BAME and frontline workers, don’t you think Hindus should be invited? Hindu professionals are working in frontline jobs in large numbers. We are disappointed," said Rajnish Kashyap, general secretary at Hindu Council UK."This is a very worrying development. We are part of the BAME community. Many Hindus doctors work in the NHS, and many Hindus, including doctors, have died of Covid-19," added Anil Bhanot, director of Interfaith Relations at the Hindu Council UK."We were hoping things would change under Keir Starmer but it looks like he is taking an anti-India pro-Islamic stance, like his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn , under pressure from the Momentum (hard-left) wing of the party and the shadow cabinet he has appointed. Yet Corbyn was rejected by the public. The faith communities have worked hard for cohesion in the UK and now we see Labour politicians dividing us."At the last Census, in 2011, 1.5 % of the UK population (817,000 people) identified themselves as Hindu, and up to April 21 this year 492 Indian-origin people had died of Covid-19 in Britain, making Indians the highest of any ethnic minority to die of the virus in the UK, and 3% of all Covid-19 UK deaths.Labour’s review is being headed by the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the party’s race relations adviser. The UK government has already announced a review into the impact of the novel coronavirus on BAME communities, led by Public Health England and the NHS.Asked why he had launched a rival review instead of supporting the government, Sir Keith told the BBC: "We are happy to work with the government but it seems we’ve approached this differently by going straight to the representative groups and we will feed this back to them."