Indian-American Democratic party candidate Ami Bera has extended his narrow lead over his Republican rival incumbent Dan Lungren in the hotly contested 7th Congressional District in California.

The Sacramento County Registrar of Voters had yesterday announced that Bera increased his lead against Lungren in the race for California’s 7th Congressional seat to 3,824 votes. Bera is now ahead by more than 1.5 per cent against Lungren and has more than doubled his previous lead.

“There are still ballots remaining, but we are confident that Sacramento County voted for new leadership that will put the people first,” said a confident Bera, who arrived here to participate in the orientation for newly elected Congressmen.

Curiously enough this freshmen’s orientation is being led by Congressman Lungren in his capacity as chairman of the Committee on House Administration. Bera had lost to Lungren in 2010.

As he arrived at the Capitol Hill, Bera was handed registration materials that tagged him as one of seven invitees with “final election results pending” — although one of those races has since been resolved, The Washington Post reported.

Officials said this is not unusual, as Committee often holds orientation programmes even for those candidates whose results have not been declared.

If elected, Bera would be only the third Indian-American to have ever been elected to the House of Representatives after Dalip Singh Saund, in the 1950s, and Bobby Jindal, in 2005 and 2008, who is now the Governor of Louisiana.

Besides Bera, five other Indian-Americans were in the race for a seat in the House of Representatives. All of them lost. They were Ricky Gill and Jack Uppal from California, Dr Syed Taj from Michigan, Dr Manan Trivedi from Pennsylvania and Upendra Chivukula from New Jersey.

Except for Gill who represents the Republican Party, the other five candidates were from the Democratic Party.

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