Indian American named Maryland House majority leader

MARYLAND: Delegate Kumar P. Barve has been appointed majority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates, becoming the first Indian American ever named majority leader of a state legislature.
First elected to the House of Delegates in 1990 and currently in his fourth term of office, Barve represents Rockville, Gaithersburg, and Garrett Park, a district with a population of 110,000 in central Montgomery County.
The first Indian American elected to a state legislature, he has served as chairman of the Montgomery County House delegation for the past eight years. As a member of the House of Delegates Economic Matters committee and chairman of the subcommittee on Science and Technology, he helped develop legislation on insurance, business regulation, consumer protection and economic development.
He also sponsored statutes on health insurance and HMO reform and was the prime sponsor of Maryland''s Patient Access Act, which allows HMO patients to use physicians outside of their network. The Montgomery County Medical Society named him Legislator of the Year in 1995, 1996 and 2000.
In 2000, Barve was the prime architect of the e-commerce Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, by which Maryland enacted one of the strongest laws in any state protecting the privacy of consumers and businesses.
Barve is the chief financial officer of an environmental company in Rockville, Md. He graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor''s degree in accounting.