Washington, Nov. 5: If 30 year-old Raj Bhakta joins Bobby Jindal on Tuesday as the second Indian American member of the US Congress, it will not be because of his scandal-plagued, Iraq-withered Republican Party’s strength or support.

Bhakta shot into nation-wide fame when he travelled 1,900 miles from his home to the US border in Texas, hired three elephants and a mariachi band, and demonstrated that anyone could cross from Mexico into the US unimpeded — not quietly, hiding from border guards, but on a pachyderm with accompanying music.

Bhakta, who is a candidate for the US House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, then made a video of the border stunt and sent it out to TV stations and Internet bloggers.

YouTube, the social website which has broken many stories lately, made a big splash of the video and conservative talk show host Bill ’Reilly gave Bhakta a top spot on his wildly popular daily programme on Fox News.

Bhakta, who was till then struggling to unseat his formidable Democratic incumbent, Allyson Schwartz, became an instant celebrity. Other national TV appearances followed.

The Indian American used these high profile opportunities on national TV to claim that terrorists can infiltrate the US and called for the resignation of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Not that he was totally unknown till then, but his fame up to that point was of a different kind.

Bhakta was earlier a participant for nine consecutive weeks on real-estate-mogul-turned-reality-TV-producer Donald Trump’s popular episode, The Apprentice.

If Bhakta does not win on Tuesday, it will be, in part, because like many Republicans who had to bow out of the elections this year, the Indian American candidate has a somewhat dubious reputation himself.

In the course of the election campaign’s intense scrutiny, Bhakta has admitted that he was arrested twice — in Colorado and in Massachusetts — for drunk driving, a charge that is a big turn off among American voters.

That did not, however, prevent Bhakta from performing another publicity stunt last week. On Halloween, Bhakta turned up at City Hall with imitations of 331 corpses in body bags to draw attention to murders in Philadelphia this year.

Speculation is that he may have an eye on the mayor’s job in Philadelphia as a long shot if he does not make it to Capitol Hill.

Incredibly, although a Republican himself, Bhakta, sensing a wave among voters against his party, has been railing at President George W. Bush, calling his administration an “obese, sclerotic, dirty and debt-ridden government”.

Clearly, Jindal, the only Indian American Congressman at present, is unlikely to want to be identified with Bhakta in case they are bunched on Capitol Hill for their common ethnicity.