Can't you get rid of the Create Parameter part and directly pass along the value you are looking for? Something like...
name = 'raj'
cmd.CommandText= \
"SELECT * FROM tb_name WHERE firstname LIKE %%%s" % name
This way the value of the name variable gets passed along when the
CommandText method is invoked. BTW, this looks too painfully much like
Visual Basic than Python :-) Just kidding (kind of)
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