The Delhi High Court has reserved its verdict on Telegram’s petition against the Centre’s decision to temporarily stop Telegram services in India before the re-examination of NEET-UG 2026 to be held on June 21. During the hearing, Justice Tejas Karia asked the Central Government lawyer regarding the ban on Telegram before the NEET re-exam, how can we stop the rights of 150 million people just because some citizens are taking the exam? Can the voice of 15 crore users be suppressed for any examination?
The court asked senior advocate Dhruv Mehta, appearing for Telegram, to understand your point by saying that this is not an emergency. Here questions are being raised on the nature of power. Second, you are saying that information can be blocked, not the entire platform. After hearing the lengthy arguments of Telegram and the Central Government, Justice Tejas Karia reserved his decision on the platform’s petition challenging the blocking order issued under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.
Defending the government’s action, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the blocking order was passed following the correct procedure and was later reviewed by a committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary. Mehta emphasized that the authorities have ample material indicating misuse of the platform in connection with the examination malpractices and argued that the court should not ignore the larger public interest involved.
The order itself was complete: Attorney General
The Attorney General supported the government’s stand, saying the order was “complete in itself” and the reasons requiring intervention were properly recorded. He argued that Telegram’s challenge based on the principle of proportionality was wrong on the facts of the case. If a country like ours cannot take preventive action, where should we go? Venkataramani said the government should take action before further damage occurs.
During the hearing, the Center told the Delhi High Court that Telegram is being used for terrorism, cyber crime and drug smuggling. Instant messaging platform Telegram is becoming the new dark web, which is connecting criminals and promoting their illegal activities. The Central Government said these things in the affidavit filed opposing the petition of Telegram, in which the government’s decision to ban its operation in India till June 22 before the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) re-exam was challenged.
Telegram becomes the new dark web
It is written in the counter affidavit that Telegram has become the new dark web, which is connecting threat actors. Criminals have increasingly adopted Telegram to post links on channels that connect to dark web forums through deep web links, making it difficult for authorities to track and trace criminals.
In fact, this decision of the Central Government was based on the concern that Telegram was used by the organized fraud network involved in the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak, due to which the examination originally held in May 2026 was cancelled. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) issued a directive under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, restricting access to the Telegram platform in India till June 22.
What arguments did the officials give?
Another order directed the platform to disable the message-editing feature for already posted messages by June 30. The government described this measure as necessary to protect the re-examination to be held on June 21. Officials argued that Telegram channels were being used to distribute leaked or fake question papers, commit fraud and manipulate message timestamps through the editing feature of the platform.
The company also claimed that it has removed more than 900 links to illegal NEET content and has used artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and manual moderation to identify violations. The Center has now filed its reply on Telegram’s petition, in which the temporary ban on the app has been justified.
Telegram channel named ‘Neet Mafia’
Apart from other arguments, the central government has said that a Telegram channel named ‘Neet Mafia’ was identified, which had about 18,617 subscribers when last checked. According to the affidavit, the channel was actively spreading content related to alleged NEET exam paper leak, advance booking arrangements, payment collection mechanism and assurances about the availability of exam-related materials.
The Centre’s counter affidavit further said, the scale of that channel itself shows that Telegram can help in spreading illegal examination related content on a large scale to thousands of users at the same time. According to the central government, Telegram’s unique technical architecture, which is completely cloud-based, allows transmission of large amounts of content.
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