Ultimately, Irom Sharmila, a woman who had fasted for sixteen years for people’s rights, received a total of ninety votes from the people of her state.5 Another candidate of the party, a Muslim woman named Najima Bibi, who had fought court cases for the rights of over a thousand women of her locality and ran a shelter home for the victims of domestic violence and destitute women, received just thirty-three votes.
