New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday, June 18, has set aside its verdict for the temporary Telegram ban for June 22, a day after the NEET UG 2026 re-examination is scheduled.
A vacation bench of Justice Tejas Karia is hearing the Telegram app’s plea against the decision to restrict its access prior to the NEET UG retest.
Earlier, justifying its stand to restrict the messaging app access till June 22, the Centre argued that the messaging app offers bot infrastructure that could be used to disseminate information in bulk.
On May 12, the National Testing Agency (NTA) had cancelled the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET UG 2026, held on May 3 for medical admissions amid allegations of paper leak. The matter is currently under investigation by the CBI.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, stated that a single Telegram account can create up to 40 bots.
“Bots are machines; they can further multiply. As per the report, Telegram can offer bot infrastructure which can disseminate information in bulk. This feature is unique as it permits creation of sophisticated networks with minimal human oversight,” the law officer said.
Justifying the decision, he said the government does not have this problem with other intermediaries.
“This platform operates through the cloud. Even if they block it and someone does mischief, law enforcement agencies cannot reach the actual user,” he said.
He also mentioned that the report indicated that Telegram is frequently used for terrorist activities and that law enforcement agencies face challenges due to this architectural design in various jurisdictions.
The previous day, the High Court asked the Centre to file its reply on Telegram’s plea against its order temporarily restricting access to the messaging app ahead of the June 21 NEET-UG 2026 re-examination.
The NEET UG 2026 re-examination on June 21 has been necessitated after the original test, held on May 3, was cancelled amid widespread allegations of paper leak and irregularities, leaving lakhs of medical aspirants in uncertainty.
The NTA said the platform-access restriction would lapse on June 22, the day after the examination. The message-editing restriction, which it clarified would not affect the sending or receiving of new messages, would stay in place until June 30. Candidates were advised to rely only on official NTA channels for examination-related information and to report any fraudulent solicitations through the National Cyber Crime Helpline 1930.
On June 16, the Centre invoked Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to restrict access to Telegram until June 22. This window covers the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21 and its immediate aftermath.
A separate direction required Telegram to disable, across India, the message-editing feature for already-posted messages until June 30.
Soon after the order, both Google and Apple delisted the Telegram app from their stores till then.
The NTA said both measures were a last resort, taken after coordinated channel-by-channel takedowns led by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs failed to produce adequate compliance at the platform level.
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh told PTI there had been no actual paper leak and that authorities were dealing with fabricated messages being circulated online. “Since this was going on, it was leading to a lot of people being anxious and a lot of mental stress to students. We had to take this action,” he said.
The editing-feature restriction targets a specific exploitation. Channel administrators had been editing old, innocuous posts to insert the actual question paper after an examination, while retaining the original send-time stamp, and circulating the resulting screenshots as purported proof that the paper had been available beforehand.
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh told PTI there had been no actual paper leak and that authorities were dealing with fabricated messages being circulated online. “Since this was going on, it was leading to a lot of people being anxious and a lot of mental stress to students. We had to take this action,” he said.
The editing-feature restriction targets a specific exploitation. Channel administrators had been editing old, innocuous posts to insert the actual question paper after an examination, while retaining the original send-time stamp, and circulating the resulting screenshots as purported proof that the paper had been available beforehand.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov pushed back sharply in a series of posts on X, saying the ban “punishes 150M+ ordinary Telegram users in India — not the insiders who leaked the exam materials.”
“The ban hasn’t stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps,” Durov said, adding that Telegram had in recent weeks removed hundreds of channels sharing leaked exam materials and related scams in India, and was making the “edited” label more visible to prevent backdating scams.
Durov then went further, alleging that Reliance, which he described as partially owned by Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, may have lobbied to have Telegram banned in India.
The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) also criticised the government’s action, calling it “a band-aid solution” and “a disproportionate answer to exam fraud.”
(With inputs from PTI)
This post was last modified on June 18, 2026 5:44 pm