Hyderabad, Nov 5 (IANS) Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Wednesday congratulated Democratic Party leader Ghazala Hashmi on her election as the Lt. Governor of Virginia.

The Chief Minister noted that Senator Ghazala Hashmi, who was born in Hyderabad and later settled in the US, holds a doctorate in international affairs.

He conveyed his best wishes to her for continued success and many more accomplishments in her public service career.

Ghazala Hashmi scripted history by winning the Virginia Lt Governor race as she became the first Indian-origin Muslim woman to hold the post.

Six years after making history with her election as Virginia state senator, the 61-year-old Democrat set another record by defeating Republican John Reid in the Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial race.

She also became the first Muslim and South Asian American to be elected to the post.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president and former Telangana minister K. T. Rama Rao has hailed Ghazala Hashmi’s election as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.

“This is massive! From Malakpet to Virginia. Congratulations to Ghazala Hashmi on becoming the first Indian-American Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. There is nothing more beautiful when democracies celebrate diversity of the world,” Rama Rao posted on ‘X’.

Ghazala Firdous Hashmi was born in Hyderabad in 1964 to Tanveer and Zia Hashmi. She lived at her maternal grandparents’ home in Malakpet area here during her childhood.

When she was four years old, she along with her mother and older brother moved to the United States, joining her father, who was then pursuing a PhD in international relations in Georgia and beginning his university teaching career, according to the profile on her website.

She attended the Marvin Pittman Laboratory School at Georgia Southern University, where both her father and uncle taught in the political science department.

Ghazala earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Georgia Southern University and her PhD in American literature from Emory University in Atlanta.

Ghazala and her husband, Azhar, moved to the Richmond area in 1991, and she spent nearly 30 years as a professor, first teaching at the University of Richmond and then at Reynolds Community College, where she founded and led the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL).

In November 2019, she was elected to Virginia state senate, defeating incumbent Republican senator Glen Sturtevant. She became the first Muslim-American woman and also the first Indian-American to enter Virginia state senate.

–IANS

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