A hoarse but ecstatic Piyush 'Bobby' Jindal, speaking over the loud cheering and celebration by supporters at his victory party in the ballroom of the Wyndham Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana, said he was "honored to have the support of the voters of the 1st District here in Louisiana" who elected him to the US Congress with a massive 79 percent margin.

Thus, Jindal, 33, a Republican who lost a close election for the governorship of Louisiana last year, becomes the first Indian American to be elected to US Congress in 47 years, after Dalip Singh Saund, a Democrat who represented California in 1957.

In an exclusive interview with rediff.com, Jindal pointed out, "We won every single parish, including parishes that did not vote for me for governor, and we are very honored to have that support."

"We got 67 per cent of the votes last year [from District 1, when he ran for governor]. We got 79 per cent this
year. That's just a terrific honor. We got the support of Democrats, Independents and Republicans throughout the entire district," he said.

"We are proud of the fact that our numbers are actually higher than the President's," he noted, but acknowledged that "certainly, his being popular here helped. [But] Again, we are proud, we had many, many Democrats who endorsed us as well."

Bush won Louisiana on Tuesday by over 60 percent and many Republican incumbents and candidates running for re-election and election to the House and the Senate won on his coat-tails. But evidently, Jindal did not need any such boost to register this historic win not only as an ethnic minority running from a Southern state, but also as the first and youngest Indian American to be elected to the US Congress from down South.

"My district actually has more Democrats than Republicans. We couldn't have done it without a lot of hard work and support. We knocked on a 100,000 doors in the last few days. We did dozens of backyard parties. I think that hard work paid off."

Jindal, who had told rediff.com in an interview on the eve of the election that this time around he would not let anyone to steal the election from him as the Democrats had done in the governor's race by unleasing a barrage of negative advertising during the last two days of the campaign, said he had not anything much different in terms of his strategy this time round, but said his campaign had been ready for the worst. He was also obviously helped by a campaign kitty that had raised over $2 million, with nearly one-fifth of it coming from the Indian-American community from across the country.

"A lot of things were the same," he said. "We stayed very positive, we stayed very focused. We did the same thing last year. I think the difference is that the voters had a chance to know me better."

Jindal said, "Last year was my first time running. A lot of voters didn't know me. This year we had a lot more time in convincing these voters, and a lot of voters that didn't vote for me last year voted for me this year."

"Last year, I won only three of the parishes -- we call them parishes and not counties -- in this Congressional
district -- but we won the other three this year because we had more time to talk to the voters directly."

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