'No' to peace bond, 'yes' to INDIA bloc: Has Neha Bora outsmarted CJP leaders?

NewsIndia News'No' to peace bond, 'yes' to INDIA bloc: Has Neha Bora outsmarted CJP leaders? 'No' to peace bond, 'yes' to INDIA bloc: Has Neha Bora outsmarted CJP leaders? Kunal Varma / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Updated: Oct 30, 2026, 20:11 IST NEW DELHI: When Neha Bora recently said “AISA will not be a part of normalising the signing of peace bonds”, she inadvertently highlighted a contrast that the Jantar Mantar 2.0 protests against SIR and "vote chori" had brought to the fore.

Neha’s refusal to sign the peace bond before a special executive magistrate and her subsequent challenge to the police move drew an obvious parallel. Did the CJP leaders - Abhijeet Dipke, Ashutosh Ranka and Sourav Das - give in to peace bond pressure easily?“Peace bonds are being weaponised to curb democratic protests.

Signing such peace bonds is no less than signing away our democratic right to dissent,” the AISA national president said and claimed that she was detained within 10 minutes of protesting at Mandi House on October 16 and was told that she and other protesters were in breach of peace.“On one side, the Constitution gives us the right to dissent.

On the other hand, such peace bonds are invoked only to detain people in the name of breach of peace. Therefore, signing such peace bonds is a principally wrong decision for us. It is no less than signing away our democratic right to dissent,” Bora said defending her decision.

Neha Bora, along with Lok Sabha leader of the opposition Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, during the opposition's protest. For the CJP, it was a harsh realisation that a lot had changed between July and October. Unlike the anti-NEET paper leak protests in June-July, the Congress-led INDIA bloc this time around were already on the streets demanding resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Interestingly, while the INDIA bloc’s original protest schedule had only one announced street protest on October 6, the group returned back to the streets four days in a row till October 9, which was a day before the announced CJP protest.The CJP and the Congress had stayed away from each other during the anti-NEET protests.

After Jantar Mantar 1.0 was over, the 'cockroaches' carried out their own campaigns in different states, while the Congress shifted focus to protests against SIR and CEC Gyanesh Kumar. Join conversation InsightfulAgreeDisagreeSkepticalConcerningPromisingWorth ReadingBig Development Abhijeet Dipke has announced that he has no political plans and would prefer to keep CJP as a pressure group.

So when CJP announced support for INDIA bloc’s November 1 rally, it set tongues wagging about their political ambitions. With CJP’s Jantar Mantar 2.0 not shaping out as they would have hoped, perhaps its leadership should take a leaf out of Saurav Das’s advice on X to a Congress “soldier” who had questioned why youth Congress and NSUI activists were being detained as soon as they hit the streets and cockroaches were allowed to roam free.

Responding to him, CJP co-founder Saurav Das had then said: “if u guys r detained immediately, then u must rethink ur strategy. don’t blame others for ur failures.”The context of that remark was different and CJP’s Jantar Mantar 2.0 campaign was in no way a failure, but Sourav's take on “rethinking strategy” perhaps holds true for the cockroaches at present.

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