Last month, the Kerry Campaign released an updated list of its top fundraisers. Kerry whose campaign raised $20 million in 2004 so far, has at least two Indian Americans on his list of some 180 Americans who raised more than $50,000 for his campaign.

At the level of ‘Vice Chairs’ (those raising $100,000 and upward) the list includes Pat Sarma, a businessman from Montclair, New Jersey, a quiet but effective political activist who has built support for Kerry. Sarma, president of Access Methods, Inc., a Montclair, New Jersey computer services firm, is originally from Tamil Nadu.

At the ‘Co-Chair’ level (those raising between $50,000 and $100,000) Niranjan Shah made the list of Kerry supporters. Shah is chairman and CEO of Globetrotters Engineering Corp., a construction services company in Oakbrook, Illinois.

He has been a member of the Illinois government’s Asian American Advisory Council. He was also appointed by the Governor of Illinois as a Trustee of the Northeastern Illinois University.

According to media reports, when Shah came to the U.S. in 1970, he was so poor he had to live in subsidized housing and took a factory job to earn money for college at Harvard, where he got his Master’s degree. His company has worked on big projects including O’Hare International Airport and the Deep Tunnel project.