Telegram has taken the Indian government to the Delhi High Court after a temporary nationwide restriction was placed on the messaging app ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination, first reported by Live Law. The government order blocks Telegram across India until June 22 and also directs the platform to disable its message-editing feature until June 30. Authorities used Section 69A of the Information Technology Act to issue the order, saying it was necessary to protect public order and ensure the fairness of one of India’s most important national examinations.
The action is linked to the NEET-UG 2026 re-test scheduled for June 21. NEET is India’s largest medical entrance exam, taken by over 2.3 million students every year for admission into medical colleges. The original exam cycle this year was already affected by allegations of paper leaks and irregularities, which led to protests, court cases, and political criticism. Because of all this, the re-exam has been under very strict monitoring, and authorities have been trying to prevent any possibility of cheating and misinformation.
According to the National Testing Agency (NTA), Telegram was being used by some groups to spread fake claims of question paper leaks and to target students with fraud. Officials said certain Telegram channels and groups were advertising ‘leaked papers’ and exam answers, often misleading students. A major concern was Telegram’s message-editing feature. Authorities explained that some users were posting normal messages before the exam and then editing them later to insert exam-related content. These edited messages were then shared as screenshots, creating false ‘proof’ that papers had been leaked before the exam actually took place. Therefore, the government decided to temporarily restrict Telegram and limit certain features during the exam period.
However, Telegram strongly disagreed with the move. The company has challenged the order in court and said that blocking an entire platform is too extreme for dealing with misuse by a small number of people. Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the decision affects more than 150 million users in India, most of whom use the app for normal communication, education, business, and community groups. He also argued that people involved in scams or leaks can simply move to other platforms, so blocking Telegram does not solve the real problem.
“Over the past few weeks, we removed hundreds of channels sharing leaked exam materials and related scams in India. We’re also making the “edited” label more visible to prevent backdating scams. Telegram is a force for good. Banning it — even temporarily — is a mistake,” Pavel Durov noted.
At the same time, Pavel Durov also alleges that telecom and tech ecosystem players may have influenced the situation surrounding Telegram’s temporary restriction in India, including naming Reliance in his comments. In posts on X, he suggested that network-level disruptions affecting Telegram’s access could be linked to routing changes within telecom infrastructure, which he described as possible ‘BGP hijacking’. Durov claimed these routing shifts may have impacted Telegram users not only in India but also in other regions like the UAE, and he implied that such actions could be deliberate and tied to competitive pressures in the messaging and telecom market.
“The sabotage seems intentional, as Reliance has ignored multiple reports. This may be part of a competitive war, as Reliance is partially owned by Meta — the company behind WhatsApp,” Durov added.
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Ashutosh is a Senior Writer at The Tech Portal, largely reporting on new tech, and intersection of technology and business. Ashutosh’s career spans across nearly a decade of technology writing across multiple platforms and languages.
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