Washington, July 02, 2008
Dr. Sunder Singh
NRI press

NRI Dr. Sambhu N. Banik, NRI community leader, Professor of Psychology and Counseling of Bowie State University has been appointed as a member of the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities by President George W Bush. President George W. Bush announced to nominate four individuals, appoint nineteen individuals and designate one individual to serve in his Administration. Dr. Banik will serve for the remainder of a two-year term expiring 05/11/09.

He is serving the NRI community for the past 40 years. He left India in 1960, finished his PhD from University of Bristol, England. and moved to US in 1964. He also spent few years as a teacher in Saskatchewan, Canada. He received his BSc and MSc Degrees from Calcutta University. In January, 2007, he was honored with the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) Institute's Bharat Samman-Pravasi Award. Dr. Sambhu N. Banik was honoured as the Outstanding Professor by Bowie State University couple months ago.

He has worked almost 15-20 years with different position for US Government in the Mental Health Administration. He had also served in the administration of the President's father. Bush's father appointed him as the Executive Director of the President's Committee on Mental Retardation in 1990.

In 2004, he became the first NRI (Indian American) to be elected as a delegate from Maryland to the GOP Convention in New York.

After becoming naturalized American citizen, he attend his first inaugural ball in 1977, celebrating President Jimmy Carter's swearing-in. In 1986, he attended a White House conference on drug abuse. He met Rudy Beserra, President Ronald Reagan's public liaison to minority communities who eventually persuaded him to change parties. In 1987, he switched the parties making him a rare Republican in heavily Democratic Montgomery County.

In 1988, Reagan named Banik to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, and in 1989, he became executive director of the President George H.W. Bush's Committee on Mental Retardation. In 1993, he lost his job when Bill Clinton was elected president.

NRI Sambhu N. Banik, of Maryland, to be a Member of the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, for the remainder of a two-year term expiring 05/11/09.