New Delhi: The Allahabad high court on Thursday (October 8) asked the Additional Advocate General of Uttar Pradesh, Manish Goyal, to explain why the term “aandolanjeevi” was used to describe journalist Satyam Verma in a preventive detention order passed against him by the district administration of Noida.“Where did this term come from? How did it find its way into an official document?” Justice Atul Sreedharan asked Goyal, reports LiveLaw. Justice Achal Sachdev was also on the bench hearing the plea, which seeks an end to Verma’s preventive detention.Verma has argued in court that the detention grounds under the National Security Act were copied from a social media thread. His advocate, Colin Gonsalves, submitted that Verma was in Lucknow when the April 13 protests in Noida, in which he is implicated, took place. CCTV and phone call records support his alibi, Gonsalves said.The detention order dated May 12, 2026 was passed by Gautam Buddh Nagar/Noida District Magistrate Medha Roopam, who was recently in the news when the same bench of the Allahabad high court fined her and other officials for how they applied the National Security Act against another student-protester, Aakriti Chaudhary, also during the workers’ protest.Also read: Special | Evidence Copied from Right-Wing Tweets, a Pro-Palestine Protest with Yechury-Karat: Inside the NSA Case Against Journalist Satyam VermaOn September 24, the Supreme Court granted Roopam relief from the strictures against her passed by the high court, including by way of a stay on the Rs 5 lakh penalty.The detention order considered by the Allahabad high court on Thursday also deals with alleged events during the same protests, in connection with which Verma, too, was detained.The order under NSA describes Verma as “irrational” and “obstinate” and says that investment prospects in the state were harmed because of the “vicious ideology of violent ‘aandolanjeevi‘ persons like you”. It says he suffers from “anti-state, anti-administration thinking”.Justice Sreedharan also wanted to know from the additional advocate general why the district magistrate (Roopam) relied on Verma’s ideology, literature and association with an organisation (Revolutionary Workers Party of India) as the basis for his preventive detention.The district magistrate is authorised to order preventive detenions, but the grounds have to be based in law.As per Verma’s legal counsel, Gonsalves, the grounds of detention are a “direct, unverified, and verbatim reproduction” of a social media thread published by X handle “The Chronology” on April 14, 2026. Even the police copied this thread to make a case against Verma.The detention grounds, as per Live Law, paint the April 2026 labour unrest in Uttar Pradsh as deterimental to industrial investment, employment and development in Gautam Buddh Nagar and says protests that turn violent could strike “fear” among investors.Live Law extracts a part of the order:Due to the emergence of industrial unrest and a violent environment, an extremely adverse impact has been caused on the environment of industrial progress, which is a factor creating fear, panic and distress among industrial employers and investors, owing to the vicious ideology of violent ‘aandolanjeevi’ persons like you, who are irrational and obstinate, who, with excessive activism, are the principal planners of such circumstances causing public disturbance and actively create industrial unrest in the Manesar industrial area of the National Capital Region, Haryana, and NoidaVerma’s petition against his detention alleges that the social media post used by the authorities against him sought to connect the Noida minimum-wage labour dispute with unrelated national and international developments, including Gaza solidarity protests in Mumbai, the anti-CAA-NRC agitations, Delhi pollution protests and the Bhagat Singh Jan Adhikar Yatra.The court has reserved its order in the habeas corpus petition seeking Verma’s release.