One day after the Delhi High Court refused to intervene in a police notice, AISA national president Neha Bora announced on Saturday that they would refuse to sign the Rs 10,000 peace bond it demands. Bora, who uses they/them pronouns, told a Delhi press conference the notice was factually wrong and treated lawful dissent as a public-order danger.
- Key Point: The October 17 notice cites Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, demanding a Rs 10,000 personal bond and one surety during an inquiry.
- Key Point: Bora denies that AISA organised the Central Park rally named in the notice and says peaceful rallies against the voter-roll revision are no breach of peace.
- Key Point: The High Court dismissed their challenge Friday; Bora says they will keep contesting how such bonds are read and enforced.
- Key Point: The case feeds a wider demand for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over a revision that struck over 130 million names from draft voter lists.
Custody, notice, court
Police detained Bora on October 16 while they travelled to a Cockroach Janta Party march at Central Park, Connaught Place. They spent the night at R K Puram police station and were released at 6 am next day. The notice summoned them for October 19 to show why the bond should not be executed. Their petition called it vague, factually wrong and unsupported by material suggesting a likely breach of peace. At Thursday’s hearing, counsel said no permission is needed to hoist the national flag, answering a claim that Bora had unfurled the tricolour without authorisation. The petition termed the proceedings a colourable use of preventive powers to suppress peaceful dissent and said they breached Articles 19(1)(a), 19(1)(b) and 21, protecting expression, assembly and liberty. The High Court refused to quash the notice on Friday.
Whose peace?
The notice alleged that Bora raised slogans at Mandi House, that protests continued near Jantar Mantar despite prohibitory orders under Section 163, and that they urged people to join the Connaught Place demonstration. Bora says the record is wrong on the central point: AISA called a peaceful Mandi House gathering for 5 pm, the Central Park call was not theirs, and they were detained at Mandi House.
“One of the grounds for making us sign a peace bond — in the notice it is written that we went to CP and protested which breaches peace. The clarification is that Central Park call was not given by us. So the evidence is factually incorrect.”
On signing, they were blunt:
“We don’t have any conditions. We are not going to sign the bond.”
Asked whose peace the bond serves, they cited the deleted voters.
“Next question is — when you talk about peace, who are you asking peace for? In the country, 13 crore voters have been removed from the voters list. When in the system, common people are being disenfranchised, peaceful protest is the way through which they can question the government. Is raising this question breach of peace? Not questioning the government is peace?”
A movement larger than one bond
Since October 2, protests have spread through Delhi, Mumbai and elsewhere, demanding Gyanesh Kumar’s exit as chief election commissioner, a halt to deletions pending an independent inquiry and restoration of the earlier rolls. The Special Intensive Revision removed over 130 million entries from draft voter lists, and a newspaper investigation alleged impropriety. The CJP, formed in May 2026 after medical school entrance exams were scrapped, forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation in July before turning to the rolls.
Its organisers have faced their own bonds. Spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka and co-convener Saurav Das were detained after climbing a gate at Jantar Mantar on October 12, a day after the site was de-notified, and freed on October 21 after a week in judicial custody on Rs 50,000 personal and surety bonds, with written undertakings not to call protests there until re-notification.
“No bond bars our constitutional right to protest, unless of course Paw-Paw is planning to change the Constitution.”
More than 150 protesters were briefly held in Delhi on Friday, while opposition parties prepare a November 1 march and INDIA bloc rally in the capital.
The magistrate handed Bora the police file on Saturday and fixed the next hearing for October 29, giving them room to argue the case rests on fragile material. The immediate issue is procedural — can surety be demanded before any breach? — but the political question is how much discretion the state holds over the street while the roll is rewritten.