Portal:Mississippi/Selected biography/9

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a Louisiana politician. Jindal was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives on November 2, 2004, from Louisiana's First Congressional District, based in the suburbs of New Orleans.

Jindal was born in Baton Rouge to recently arrived Indian immigrants who were attending graduate school. Jindal was a Hindu but converted to Catholicism as a teenager. He is the only Indian-American currently serving in Congress, and the second in congressional history after Dalip Singh Saund, a Democrat who represented California's 29th District from 1957 to 1963.

He was chosen by Scholastic Update magazine as "one of America's top 10 extraordinary young people for the next millennium." He was India Abroad Person of the Year 2005. In 1997, he married Supriya Jolly (born 1972). The couple has three children, Selia, Shaan, and Slade. On Tuesday, August 15, 2006, Jindal assisted in delivering his third child when his wife awoke, in labor. The child was born before ambulances had time to respond.

On Monday, January 22, 2007, Jindal announced his candidacy for Governor of Louisiana in the upcoming election. (read more . . . )