RANCHI: Power doesn’t affect everyone, wife of BJP nominee from Badkagoan Assembly seats and three times MLA Loknath Mahto proved it when she went about selling vegetables as her husband filed his nomination papers.
Last Friday, when Mahto was filing his nomination, Moulini Devi, his wife, was spotted selling their fresh produce.
“What would I do there? He is filing his nomination. If I start roaming around with my husband, who will do the housework,” Moulini Devi asked, adding that it is difficult to leave the profession as they belong to a family of farmers.
Moulini Devi, who has been selling vegetables from before her husband became an MLA, never stopped working in the fields even after he won the Assembly elections thrice.
“I have been doing it for years, what is wrong in it. I sell what I produced in my kitchen garden, why should I feel ashamed? We grow vegetables and sell the surplus,” she said.
When asked what she does with the money, she proudly claimed that she is not dependent on her husband’s income.
Loknath Mahto, 74, also believes that since farming is their ancestral occupation there is no issue if his wife sells vegetables.
“It hardly matters... whenever I get time I help her in the fields,” said Mahto.
Mahto spends his earnings as an MLA by helping people marry their daughters and medical requirements of the needy in his constituency.
He even won the best MLA award in 2005. Mahto won the seat consecutively in 1995, 2000 and 2004 on a BJP ticket.
The seat is now with the Congress for the last two elections, but after the AJSU snapped ties with BJP, Loknath Mahto was given a ticket by the saffron party.
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