Lexington elections: Indian American candidates have an upper hand

​Washington: Seven out of eight Indian-American candidates, who ran for local elections in Lexington city in the US state of Kentucky on Tuesday, have won. With this, now their are a total of 12 Indian-Americans elected members of the Lexington Town Meeting, India New England News reported on Wednesday.

"This movement is historic. Great result despite heavy turnout because of presidential elections which tends to favour known contestants and incumbents," Narain Bhatia, a long-time Lexington resident and community activist, said.

The winners of Lexington elections include Sharmila Mudgal from Precinct-3 for one year term, Anoop Garg from Precinct-4 gets three year term, Pam Joshi and Rita Pandey gets three year term each from Precinct-9 and Precinct-5, respectively.

Anil Ahuja from Precinct-5, Vikas Kinger from Precinct-7 and Nirmala Garimella from Precinct-8 got one year term each. The only Indian-American candidate to lose in the election was Hema Bhatt in Precinct-9.

"Hema Bhatt lost but got 375 votes and lost by just 36 votes while beating Scott Burson, a long time town meeting member and former School Committee member by 76 votes," Bhatia said. In addition to the winners in Tuesday's elections, Indian-Americans have five current Town Meeting members whose term is not over making a total of twelve.

These sitting members are: Narain Bhatia, Ravish Kumar, Sanjay Padaki, Dinesh Patel and Syed Rizvi.