Chaos ensued in Delhi on October 4th in the form of heightened protests against CEC, with AISA national president Neha Bora and AAP cadres being arrested once again.
Social media images revealed that Neha Bora was trying to scale over the barricades at Ashoka Road amid the march of student activists towards Jantar Mantar, with police officers trying to prevent her from doing so.
There were heavy barricades around the place along with numerous police officers who had been posted there to prevent the protesters from entering the restricted areas.
The allegations that the AISA members made against the arrest were somewhat unique.
They said that Bora was arrested in a privately owned car without any license plate by the Delhi Police while on the march.
There has not been any response by the Delhi Police regarding the allegations mentioned above. Bora was reportedly released after a short period of time.
However, the Sunday incidents were not an exception, as a similar series of incidents had been witnessed on the previous two days.
On Friday, 2 October, Bora was reportedly evading the police efforts of detaining him at Jantar Mantar while there were protest marches in spite of the imposed restrictions.
On Saturday, 3 October, the scope had become wider. About 150 protesters, including Bora, activist Yogendra Yadav, and senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, were detained on the second day of the anti-CEC march.
According to members of the AISA, Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal and senior advocates Nitya Ramakrishnan and Pallav Sisodia accompanied Bora, Yadav, and student activists in their march, where protesters broke one barrier and were stopped near Jantar Mantar Road and taken in buses.
Photo: @PTI
The detention on Saturday was accompanied by a more serious accusation.
Members of AISA accused a male policeman of abusing Bora during detention and another one of abusing her. There was no official response from Delhi Police regarding the particular accusations.
While addressing people through a video message after being released on Friday, Bora declared that the detentions will not stop the campaign to have CEC Gyanesh Kumar resign, which is what motivated the protest on Saturday.
These protests have roots in complaints about irregularities during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, known as SIR, led by the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The Cockroach Janta Party, headed by its founder Abhijeet Dipke, has played an important role in orchestrating the nationwide protest campaign along with AISA, AAP, and others.
Abhijeet Dipke has stated the exact demands of CJP, saying, “Our demands are that he face criminal charges, that the SIR be stopped, that elections take place according to the 2025 electoral rolls, and that an independent entity picks a new CEC.”
Dipke had a similar confrontation with the police this time in Mumbai, just days after the chaos in Delhi.
The Mumbai Police refused permission for CJP to stage protests at Shivaji Park in Dadar, raising doubts on whether Dipke had been arrested before the protest rally. They said that Dipke had been found to be near Marine Drive by 5 p.m., where he was meeting people and confronting the police officials stationed there.
Dipke provided an altogether opposite picture. He claimed that a police woman had asked him to go to tea with her, whereupon he had gone to the police station and was later let off, all without getting any tea from her—the whole purpose was to waste his time.
Having come back from the police station, Dipke uploaded some photos of the meeting with students in Ambedkar Hostel at Chembur.
The demonstrations have been planned, according to Dipke, not for a one-time occurrence but for an indefinite period of time.
Addressing the issue prior to the Gandhi Jayanti rallies on October 2, he stated that the CJP's "Jail Bharo Andolan" has been organized in collaboration with the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) and the MNS under Raj Thackeray, along with many other political factions.
Earlier, he had threatened that a rally will be organized at the Jantar Mantar in Delhi if Kumar does not quit, and that too well before the scheduled time, as there have been continued demonstrations at the Jantar Mantar since Friday.
The use of Jantar Mantar as a hotspot for large scale detentions has been a regular practice in the past too, where protests of varying nature have taken place at the location, whether related to the Anti-CAA protests or protests carried out by students demanding the release of the detained protesters.
The key difference in this latest round of protests is the allegation made regarding the use of a private, unmarked vehicle to arrest the protest leader, which if proven, will be different from how detentions of similar nature take place using buses and police stations in other such cases.
