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Bihar's Gaya elects manual scavenger as deputy mayor

'Gaya is such a place where people seek enlightenment'

chinta_devi

Bihar's Gaya scripted history by electing a woman who has worked as a manual scavenger for the last 40 years as deputy mayor of the city. Chinta Devi, in the recently held municipal polls, was elected deputy mayor of Gaya. 

In 1996, a similar milestone was set when Bhagwati Devi, a woman from the highly marginalised musahar community, who was a stone crusher was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Gaya constituency in 1996 from Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United).

Gaya's Mayor-elect Ganesh Paswan said, "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 faeces on her head as a sanitation staff when there were few toilets here. This is historic." 

Chinta Devi has previously also worked as a vegetable seller. Former Deputy mayor Mohan Srivastava also backed Ms Devi.

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