U.S. STATE POLLS: FOUR INDIAN AMERICANS WIN

Washington, Nov. 7: Four Indian Americans, including a Muslim woman and a former White House technology policy advisor, have won state and local elections held in the US. Indian-American Ghazala Hashmi, created history by becoming the first Muslim woman to be elected to the Virginia State Senate, while Suhas Subramanyam, who served as the White House technology policy adviser to former president Barack Obama, has been elected to the Virginia State House of Representative.Hashmi had moved to the US from India as a young girl with her family 50 years ago.

Subramanyam entered the Virginia State House of Representatives from the Indian-Americandominated district of Loudon and Prince William.

His mother, a native of Bengaluru in India, had immigrated to the US in

1979.

In California, IndianAmerican Mano Raju won his election to remain San Francisco’s Public Defender.

Raju attended Columbia University as an undergraduate where he researched Critical Race Theory under Professor Kendall Thomas. After an influential fellowship at the Oxford Center for African Studies, he relocated to Berkeley in the

90s to pursue his Masters in South Asian Studies and later his JD at Berkeley School of Law, where he interned in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

In North Carolina, incumbent Dimple Ajmera won a convincing reelection to Charlotte City Council. A former Certified Public Accountant, Ajmera immigrated to the US from India along with her parents when she was 16.