Patna: The civic body elections in Bihar’s Gaya have scripted history by electing a woman who has worked as a manual scavenger for the last 40 years to high public office. Chinta Devi has been elected Deputy Mayor of Gaya in the recently held municipal polls.
Such a milestone, however, is not new for Gaya. Bhagwati Devi, a woman from the highly marginalised musahar community, who was a stone crusher by profession, was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Gaya constituency in 1996 from Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).
“Gaya is such a place where people seek enlightenment, and it is also the place from where a musahar woman can go to the Lok Sabha. This time the people here have set an example, probably for the entire world, by electing Chinta Devi who used to carry human feces on her head as a sanitation staff when there were few toilets here. This is historic,” Gaya’s Mayor-elect Ganesh Paswan said.
Chinta Devi has also worked as a sanitation worker and a vegetable seller. Former Deputy mayor Mohan Srivastava also backed Ms Devi, and said that she has created history by winning the election. He added that the people of the city support the downtrodden, and work to take them forward in society.
