MP Arvind Venkat read the Upanishad evening prayers at the PA House.
Rep. Arvind Venkat read a prayer from the Evening Prayer at the Penn House on Wednesday and said he wanted to read the prayer from the Hindu text because this year is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Penn Hills.
This temple is the first free-standing Hindu temple built by Hindu immigrants in North America in 1976, Venkat said as he read the Sanskrit text and then the English translation.Arvind Venkat is an Indian-born American physician and Democratic politician serving in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He represents the 30th District in Allegheny County, covering the Pittsburgh suburbs, and first took office in January 2023 after winning the 2022 election; Re-elected in 2024.
He was born on June 6, 1974 in Madurai, India, and later grew up in the United States, mainly in Michigan. He is noted as the first American Indian to serve in the Pennsylvania state legislature and one of the few doctors in the state assembly in recent decades.
Before entering politics, Venkat worked in emergency medicine. He earned degrees from Harvard University and earned his medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine, followed by residency training at the University of Cincinnati.
He worked as an emergency physician at Allegheny Health Network and was affiliated with Allegheny General Hospital. In addition to his clinical work, he has held academic and leadership roles, including teaching emergency medicine and serving in leadership positions with the American College of Emergency Physicians.
A clear path to re-election
Arvind Venkat has a clear path to re-election this fall, as a judge recently ruled that his Republican challenger, Ehab Akkari, did not meet the residency requirements to serve as state legislator.
Pennsylvania law requires that a candidate for the House of Representatives be a resident of the state for four years, and a resident of the district he hopes to represent for one year. But last week, a Republican voter cast doubt on whether Akkari had done so, pointing to the fact that Akkari, who lived in West Virginia and still runs a plastic surgery practice there, bought his Wexford home in 2023, and did not register to vote here until 2024.Akkari testified that he decided to live in Pennsylvania and spent most of his time here starting in early 2022. He testified that he was in the midst of a divorce at the time and was working as a plastic surgeon at a clinic in Cranberry, which paid for him to stay at a nearby hotel for more than a year.
