- Wednesday, March 05, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
The civic body elections in Gaya, a holy city in the southern part of the Indian state of Bihar, has made history by electing a woman, who worked as a scavenger for last four decades and even carried human feces on her head, as the deputy mayor.
According to NDTV, Chinta Devi was elected to the high public office in the recently held municipal polls.
However, it is not the first time that Gaya has scripted such a history.
In 1996, Bhagwati Devi, a woman from the ‘Mushahar’ community, a highly marginalised one in the state, and a stone crusher by profession, was elected to the Lok Sabha or the Lower House of the Indian parliament from Gaya constituency on the ticket of Janata Dal (United), the party of current chief minister Nitish Kumar.
“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 was quoted as saying.
Chinta Devi, his deputy, has also worked as a sanitation worker and a vegetable seller in the past.
Former deputy mayor Mohan Srivastava backed her and said she has created history by winning the election.
He also added that the people of Gaya support the downtrodden and work towards their social advancement.
