Delhi HC upholds Centre’s temporary Telegram ban ahead of NEET re-exam

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday upheld the Centre’s decision to temporarily suspend Telegram’s services across India ahead of the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination, holding that the government had strictly followed the procedure prescribed under law while invoking emergency blocking powers.

Rejecting a plea filed by Telegram challenging the restrictions, a single-judge Bench of Justice Tejas Karia ruled that the impugned orders satisfied the test of proportionality and were justified in the circumstances surrounding the conduct of the nationwide medical entrance examination.

“After considering all arguments, we found that given the emergency nature of impugned orders, respondents (authorities) strictly followed the procedure,” the Delhi High Court said while rejecting the petition.

“We have also held that the test of proportionality is satisfied as requirements, namely legitimate objective, nexus of action with the measure adopted, necessity of the measure are met and least restrictive measures have been adopted,” Justice Karia added.

Telegram had approached the Delhi High Court challenging the Centre’s decision to temporarily suspend its services across India till June 22 and disable its message-editing feature till June 30.

The restrictions were imposed pursuant to directions issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, following recommendations made by the National Testing Agency (NTA).

The Union government had defended the move, contending that Telegram’s architecture and repeated misuse for examination-related frauds left authorities with “no other option” but to invoke emergency blocking powers.

In an affidavit filed before the Delhi High Court, the Centre said the decision was taken only after “exhausting alternatives”, including repeated requests for targeted takedowns of unlawful content, which were found inadequate.

According to the government, the NTA had identified several Telegram channels allegedly involved in selling purported NEET question papers and examination-related scams.

The Centre claimed that the channels, groups and bots under scrutiny had a combined reach of nearly 1.46 lakh accounts.

The Union government also relied on reports of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) and argued that Telegram’s anonymity features, large subscriber channels, automated bots, forwarding mechanisms and cloud-based architecture posed significant challenges for law enforcement agencies.

The Centre had maintained that content-specific takedowns were ineffective because channels and bots could be recreated within minutes, making temporary platform-wide restrictions necessary to prevent further misuse ahead of the re-examination.

The NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination is scheduled to be held on June 21 for over 22 lakh candidates following allegations of question paper leaks in the original examination conducted on May 3.

–IANS