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Informist, Friday, Jun. 19, 2026

 

--HC upholds govt's temporary ban against Telegram ahead of NEET retest 

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court Friday upheld the government's temporary ban on Telegram FZ-LLC.'s messaging platform till Jun. 22, ahead of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test re-examination on Jun. 21. The high court said that the reasons given to Telegram for banning its platform were sufficient and the government had strictly followed all the procedures under the Information Technology Act, 2000.  

 

The government's interim and final orders were founded upon relevant materials, which were duly considered by the Centre, said Justice Tejas Karia. The ban order against Telegram does not suffer from non-application of mind, as alleged by the messaging platform, said Justice Karia. 

 

The high court said that there was no reason to exclude applications or platforms from the ambit of the word "information" in the Information Technology Act, for taking action against them. Like the word information, applications and platforms perform logical arithmetic and memory functions and include inputs, output processing, storage, computer software, and communication facilities connected with a computer system or computer network, said the court. Accordingly, the government is empowered under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act to issue directions for blocking the public access to Telegram, said the court.

 

Justice Karia said that the test of proportionality has also been satisfied in the case as the requirements, namely identification of legitimate objective, nexus of action with the measures adopted are met and least restrictive measures have been adopted. Accordingly, the action of temporarily blocking public access to Telegram couldn't be held to be disproportionate, he said. 

 

The ban came after the country's key undergraduate medical entrance examination was cancelled earlier this year following allegations of widespread paper leaks and irregularities. It has been alleged that the Telegram app was used to circulate leaked questions and communicate with students, middlemen, and others linked to the illicit network.

 

Telegram has also been directed to disable the message-editing feature for messages already posted till Jun. 30. The National Testing Agency said the feature was used "to fabricate after-the-event 'paper leak' evidence in case of several recent examinations". It claimed that a channel administrator "edits an older, innocuous message to insert the actual question paper after the examination has been conducted, and the resulting chat is then circulated as purported 'evidence' that the paper was in circulation before the examination".

 

In a hearing on Thursday, on Telegram's argument that its fundamental right was being infringed, Justice Karia had observed that the Right to Free Speech under the Indian Constitution was available to users, not the application, which the Karnataka High Court had also held in a judgment. Justice Karia had asked what steps Telegram would take in real time if there was a paper leak on its platform. He questioned whether there was any real-time surveillance mechanism available on Telegram's platform. "Let's have a hypothetical (question). Suppose a paper is leaked by the time the order comes to you (Telegram), the damage is done. What is your proposal? How can it be dealt with?" asked Justice Karia. 

  

Justice Karia had also questioned the Centre on how it could deprive the rights of 150 million Telegram users just because one set of citizens was appearing in the examination. "The question is, can you block somebody else's rights to protect someone else's rights?" observed Justice Karia.  

 

Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta justified the temporary ban on Telegram, arguing that the platform's architecture makes it unable to do what is required in these circumstances. Telegram's extensive bot ecosystem provides automatic redirection to mirror channels for deleted channels, he said. Telegram's privacy policy also provides for the deletion of all data, messages, and media upon account deletion. It permits users to conceal critical identifiers, including their phone numbers, and communicate solely through usernames, he said. These features significantly impede law enforcement agencies' ability to identify co-conspirators, trace communication chains, and establish attribution during an investigation, Mehta said. 

  

Telegram had argued that the ban on the app suffers from lack of application of mind. The government's order was overboard, it said, adding that the secretary of the ministry had issued it without thoroughly examining it. The government's ban was arbitrary and violated the fundamental Right to Speech and the Right to Equality under the Constitution, Telegram had said. 

 

The National Testing Agency, which conducts examinations for admission to higher educational institutions, said that over the past few weeks, Telegram channels operating openly on the platform have been demanding money from candidates in exchange for purported access to the examination paper. According to the agency, some of these channels openly advertise their purpose through names such as 'Paper Leaked NEET', 'Re-NEET 2026', 'Private Mafia', and 'Ree Neet Mafiaa'. 

 

The medical entrance examination conducted on May 3 was cancelled following reports that the question papers were leaked. The National Testing Agency has faced flak from candidates and parents for its inability to secure the question paper. Several opposition parties, including the Congress, have criticised the government and the agency and demanded the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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