Telegram approached the Delhi High Court on Wednesday, seeking to challenge the temporary ban imposed on the platform ahead of the NEET UG re-examination scheduled for June 21.
The Center had imposed temporary restrictions on the app in India until June 22, with the National Testing Agency (NTA) welcoming the move. The move is aimed at preventing fraud and misinformation targeting candidates, NTA said.
The matter has been placed before a bench of Justice Tagas Karia, and the hearing is scheduled for later today.
This came after NTA uncovered a large-scale scam network operating on Telegram, claiming that scammers were demanding anywhere between… $14000 to $25,000, and in some cases up to $10 lakh, by falsely claiming access to “leaked re-examination papers”.
What do we know about the ban order?
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has directed temporary restrictions on access to Telegram in India till June 22, to cover the examination period and immediately after, NTA said in a statement.
The ministry also directed the platform to disable the message editing feature in India until June 30. The NTA said this was done to prevent organized use of Telegram by cheating rackets that allegedly tried to defraud NEET candidates through false claims of access to examination papers. Furthermore, the agency said that the message editing feature was requested to be disabled to prevent the creation of fabricated “paper leak” evidence by allowing users to change previously sent messages while retaining the original timestamps.
While acknowledging the inconvenience caused to Telegram users, NTA said the measures were temporary and necessary to protect the integrity of NEET UG. The medical entrance exam, which was conducted on May 3, was canceled amid allegations of irregularities and leaked papers.
“More than 150 million users punished”: Telegram founder banned
Meanwhile, Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticized the temporary restrictions on the platform, saying they would inconvenience the app’s more than 150 million users.
“The Indian Ministry of Information Technology banned the Telegram app for a week because some users shared leaked exam questions. This punishes over 150 million regular users of Telegram in India, not the insiders who leaked the exam materials. The ban did not stop anything. The leaks have just moved to another app,” Durov said in a post on X.
NTA DG Abhishek Singh defended the Centre’s decision, saying students would not be able to access channels operated through VPNs outside the country. “People can run some channels using a VPN or they can work from outside India. But the reality is that as few students access them, they will not be able to access them. Although they can continue to run their channels, but if there are no customers, fraud will be prevented and students will be protected from losing money and from wasting their time chasing fake question papers,” Singh said.
