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Four Indian Americans have been nominated to the Democratic Party’s 2016 Convention Standing Committees which would formally announce its candidate for the presidential polls, writes Lalit K. Jha. (#IndianAmericans, #DemocraticParty, #DNC, #2016USPresidentialElections)

Topping the list of Indian-Americans is Smita Shah, president and CEO of Chicago-based Spaan Tech, who has been nominated as vice chair of the Rules Committee.

One of the top fund-raisers for President Barack Obama and now Hillary Clinton, California-based Shefali Razdan Duggal has been nominated as a member of the Rules Committee.

Renowned ophthalmologist and entrepreneur, Sreedhar Potarazu has been nominated to the Credentials Committee, according to the list released by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

DNC rules provide for the Chair to appoint 75 Party Leader and Elected Official Members to the three Convention Standing Committees to be held in Philadelphia in July, which would formally announce party’s presidential candidate.

These Party Leader and Members serve in addition to and together with the over 160 members that are elected in every state to those same committees.

“This slate represents the great variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences that make up our party. We wanted to make sure that the diversity of our party was reflected at the highest levels in terms of race, gender, age and geography,” Schultz said.

Saif Khan, an Iraq war veteran who had served as a Combat Engineer in the Iraqi city of Mosul as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was nominated to the Rules Committee. He hails from Mysore and currently lives in Washington, DC.

A Clinton White House staffer, Shah was a delegate at the 1996 and 2004 Democratic National Conventions and was on the DNC’s Rules Committee in 2000 and 2004.

In 2012, she became the first Indian American to serve as a Democratic National Convention parliamentarian.

Duggal is a presidential appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which supervises the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for a term expiring in January 2018.

She is one of the top fundraiser for the Clinton campaign and also serves on the National Finance Committee for Hillary for America, Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Potarazu is the founder of VitalSpring Technologies Inc, a privately held enterprise software company focusing on providing employers with applications to empower them to become more sophisticated purchasers of health care.