Hyderabad, Nov. 5 — Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Wednesday congratulated Ghazala Hashmi on her election as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, calling it a proud moment for Hyderabad and the Indian diaspora.
Hashmi, who was born in Hyderabad and later moved to the United States, previously served as a Virginia state senator. She holds a doctorate in international affairs and has spent much of her career in academia and public service.
The Chief Minister conveyed his best wishes for her continued success, noting her historic achievement as the first Indian-origin Muslim woman to be elected to the post.
Hashmi’s victory marks another milestone in her political journey. Six years after becoming the first Muslim-American and first Indian-American woman elected to the Virginia state senate, the 61-year-old Democrat has now defeated Republican candidate John Reid to secure the lieutenant governor’s office.
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader and former Telangana minister K. T. Rama Rao also praised Hashmi’s win, describing it as a celebration of diversity in democracy. “From Malakpet to Virginia — this is massive,” he wrote on social platform X.
Born in 1964 to Tanveer and Zia Hashmi, she spent her early childhood in the Malakpet area of Hyderabad before moving to the United States at age four, when her father was pursuing a PhD in Georgia.
Hashmi earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Georgia Southern University and later completed her PhD in American literature from Emory University. She and her husband relocated to the Richmond region in 1991, where she taught at the University of Richmond and later at Reynolds Community College, founding the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Her election to the Virginia Senate in 2019, where she defeated incumbent Republican Glen Sturtevant, marked her first major political breakthrough and underscored the growing representation of South Asian and Muslim communities in American public life. (Source: IANS)
