The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to continue the government’s ban on Telegram for six days ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination, as Justice Tejas Karia rejected the messaging app’s challenge to a June 16 order temporarily restricting its access across India.
The single judge bench held that the bloc met the constitutional test of proportionality and that the government had followed due process under Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act 2000.
The ruling paves the way for the Telegram ban to remain in effect by re-testing the NEET-UG on Sunday. The government restricted access to Telegram until June 22 – one day after the retest – and separately asked the app to disable the message editing feature on posts already published until June 30.
NEET-UG 2026, the medical entrance exam originally held on May 3, was canceled the following week after the National Testing Agency (NTA) confirmed with enforcement agencies that the question paper had been hacked. It was attended by approximately 2.27 million students in 551 cities before cancellation. A retest is later scheduled for June 21.
Earlier this week, the government invoked Section 69A to order a nationwide ban on Telegram, citing the need to prevent further leaks and protect the integrity of the retest. Telegram challenged the order in the Delhi High Court, calling it “unconstitutional, arbitrary and illegal”, and demanded that the temporary ban be either reversed or the order be suspended until the case is heard.
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The court’s refusal to grant this stay was based on three main findings:
Did the mass pass the proportionality test?
Under Indian constitutional law, any government action that restricts a fundamental right – here, access to a communications platform – must pass what is called a proportionality test. Under it, the measure must serve a legitimate aim, be an appropriate means of achieving it, represent the least restrictive option, and not continue for longer than necessary.
The Delhi High Court held that the ban removed this barrier on all counts: “The test of proportionality is met… and the government’s actions are the least restrictive. The matter cannot be said to be disproportionate.”
In its written testimony submitted to the court ahead of Friday’s ruling, the government said Telegram’s features created a “unique ecosystem” that could be exploited for “exam leaks, online fraud, terrorist propaganda and other illegal activities.”
On legality, the court accepted that protecting the 2.2 million candidates scheduled to appear for the NEET re-examination, and avoiding disruption to public order, was a valid objective.
In terms of relevance, the court agreed with the government that “the structure of the Telegram platform” was “conducive to the amplification and dissemination of content on a large scale,” and capable of helping illegal material “reach a large number of users within a short period of time.”
The Supreme Court extended this reasoning to the parallel government action, which disabled Telegram’s message editing feature. The court said the feature could be misused to falsely claim that question papers had been leaked before the exam.
Regarding whether there was a less restrictive option, the government argued in court that it had already attempted targeted removals, but had failed.
Channels such as “Private Mafia,” with thousands of followers, continued to operate despite being reported, and Telegram’s bot infrastructure allowed automated accounts to operate “without sustained human intervention,” the government said in its affidavit opposing the Telegram challenge. More than 150 NEET-related bots have been disabled, but the core ecosystem continues, it said.
The court appeared to largely accept that argument on Friday, noting that such entry-level interventions have been “repeatedly shown to be ineffective and inadequate.”
Telegram has disputed this point in court. Representatives of the app have held compliance meetings with government agencies since May, removed more than 900 illegal NEET-related links using artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and manual moderation, and removed flagged content within an hour of receiving specific URLs on June 9, it said. She said these actions were evidence that narrower implementation was working.
Senior advocate Dhruv Mehta, representing Telegram, also argued that singling out the app while other intermediaries operate freely was itself disproportionate and contrary to Article 14 (equality before law) of the Constitution. It said the government’s action affected more than 150 million users and businesses due to the behavior of a small number of bad actors.
The judge considered this question while hearing the matter on Thursday.
Justice Tejas Karia had asked the government whether it could restrict the rights of millions of ordinary users because some people were appearing for an examination. The judge asked: “Can you deny another person’s right?”
Attorney General R Venkataramani had argued in court: “This platform, because of its architecture, is Frankenstein. If a country like ours cannot take preventive measures, where do we go?”
By Friday, the court had concluded that the government’s action was “narrowly tailored and limited to the strictly necessary period,” meeting the requirement of the proportionality test that even justified restrictions must not exceed their purpose.
Regarding the government’s argument that any delay in its procedures might lead to “mass student unrest, mass student unrest, disruption of public order and incitement to commit a cognizable crime,” the court held that the reasons for the ban were sufficient given the “emergency nature” of the procedure.
Read also: The ‘time travel’ loophole that led India to ban Telegram before the NEET-UG re-exam
Was the action well thought out?
The Telegram challenge also questioned whether the government action was issued without sufficient thought.
Her counsel, senior advocate Dhruv Mehta, said, “The order (government) says, ‘For the benefit of the sovereignty and integrity of India’. An examination like NEET will affect the sovereignty and integrity of India? What is the application of reason?”
The Supreme Court disagreed, observing on Friday that the measure “did not suffer from failure to apply reason” and there was a “direct and substantial connection” between the directions issued and the reasons given by the government for them.
Read also: How NEET exam was leaked: ‘2 sets of question papers’, 3 masterminds and a 5-state network
Did the government follow due process?
Telegram also argued that it did not receive proper notice or a fair hearing before the ban came into effect, and separately asserted that Section 69A, which enables the government to block “information”, cannot be extended to cover an entire platform rather than content.
The court rejected both arguments. It held that the government had strictly followed the procedure required under Section 69A and the IT Rules 2009, so the objections to insufficient notice or hearing “fail in light of the statutory scheme”.
Regarding the platform versus content question, it held that “there is no reason to exclude the platform from the scope of ‘information’” under the law, meaning that the law’s power to ban could be valid for the entirety of Telegram.
