Patna, Feb. 15: Tripty Kumari, the mukhiya of Raj Parthu panchayat in Nalanda district, at first glance appears to be your average woman next door. She hails from a middle class family and prefers to move with her husband, a farmer by profession.

Tripty was a homemaker before she decided to join politics and first fought the elections for the post of mukhiya in 2006. She again won the elections in 2011 and retained the seat. However, it was not a cakewalk for her in 2011 as she was facing charges of financial irregularities, which have prompted the demand for her ouster.

Her supporters claimed that she had to work under adverse circumstances as her opponents, who had to bite the dust at the hustings, were bent on removing her from the post. The 40-year-old panchayat head never hesitated in attending the official meetings, they said.

The mukhiya’s supporters, however, admitted that Tripty enjoyed the blessings of an influential legislator of the ruling party, an allegation denied by her. Tripty claimed that she was focused on the development of her panchayat and nothing more. “If you are a professional at work, be ready to face criticism,” she said philosophically.

Tripty has good relations with the police officials too. “She came to see me twice or thrice to discuss the case related to her,” recalled sub-divisional police officer of Hilsa, Rakesh Kumar Sinha. He said the mukhiya was accompanied by her husband when she visited his office at Hilsa, about 60km southeast of Patna, recently.

Sinha’s predecessor, Baliram Kumar Choudhary, had supervised the cases of misappropriation of funds and found the allegations to be true. Sinha said a central team had visited the panchayat to inquire into the allegations of misappropriation of public money.

“As far as I recall, the team found some sort of deviation in the work allotted under MNREGA. But I have to verify it from the records,” he told The Telegraph over phone from Hilsa.

Tripty represents one of the 8,463 panchayats across the state. The majority of the mukhiyas face charges of corruption particularly in recommending the names of beneficiaries of the Indira Awas and MNREGA schemes.

Not only that, there are allegations of their husbands (mukhiya patis) attending official meetings instead of their wives, which has evoked sharp criticism even from Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh.