Instant messaging platform Telegram has approached the Delhi High Court challenging the Central government decision to ban its operations in India till June 22 in view of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Undergraduate (NEET-UG) re-exams..Advocate Madhav Khosla mentioned the matter before a vacation bench of Justice Tejas Karia and the Court agreed to hear the matter today on an urgent basis. Khosla told the Bench that Telegram has over 150 million users who have been affected by the government's ban. .In its writ petition, Telegram argues that the government has singled them out while other social media intermediaries continue to operate without restriction, violating Article 14 of the Constitution of India."[The] impugned Order proceeds on the impermissible premise that misuse by a subset of users justifies blocking of an entire platform. Such an approach, if upheld, would enable indiscriminate suspension of digital platforms, severely undermining constitutional protections of free speech and access to information," the plea contends. The company states that it held multiple meetings with government agencies from May onwards and submitted detailed responses outlining both proactive and reactive moderation measures.Telegram stated that after receiving specific URLs from authorities on June 9, it removed the flagged content within an hour. The company also claimed to have taken down more than 900 links related to unlawful NEET content and deployed artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and manual moderation to identify violations."The Impugned Order is also vitiated by patent non-application of mind. It accepts the allegations of Respondent No. 3 [National Testing Agency (NTA)] at face value, fails to disclose either reasons or the material which the Impugned Order was based to the Petitioners, and fails to consider the documented and state of the art measures taken by the Petitioners [Telegram]," the company said in its writ petition..The government temporarily banned the messaging platform, citing concerns that it had been used by organised cheating networks involved in the NEET-UG controversy. The decision followed the cancellation of the original NEET examination after allegations of widespread paper leaks and irregularities.The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) issued a direction under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, restricting access to the Telegram platform in India till June 22. Another order was issued directing the platform to disable, till June 30, the message-editing feature for messages already posted. The government has described the measure as necessary to protect the integrity of the re-examination scheduled for 21 June. Authorities argued that Telegram channels were being used to distribute leaked or fake question papers, coordinate fraud and manipulate message timestamps through the platform’s editing feature.
