New Delhi, June 17: Telegram has approached the Delhi High Court to contest a temporary central government restriction that suspended the application’s operations across India ahead of a national entrance examination. Representing the platform, legal counsel mentioned the plea before a vacation bench of Justice Tejas Karia on Wednesday, requesting an urgent hearing. The restriction, implemented on Tuesday, has temporarily blocked access to the messaging service for an estimated 150 million domestic users.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology initiated the short-term suspension following a formal advisory from the National Testing Agency, which highlighted risks concerning the upcoming NEET-UG 2026 re-examination on June 21. Beyond blocking the app entirely until June 22, the directive orders Telegram to fully disable its message-editing function for existing posts until June 30, a feature authorities claim cheating rings utilize to simulate after-the-fact paper leaks.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov asserted that the sudden regulatory blockade points toward corporate influence rather than pure administrative necessity. “Such abuse of global Internet routing is alarming,” the chief executive declared on social media, accusing dominant local network providers of aggressive market tactics. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Reliance/WhatsApp were also behind the recent lobbying effort to ban Telegram in India.”
Corporate analysts and industry insiders have pushed back against the platform’s allegations, describing them as highly inaccurate. An anonymous telecom sector source maintained that the CEO’s public claims confuse separate corporate entities, specifically mistaking subsea cable operator Reliance Communications with Reliance Industries’ digital division, Jio, in which WhatsApp’s parent company Meta holds a minor investment.
The platform’s leadership affirmed that the restrictions unjustly impact millions of innocent citizens while failing to address the core perpetrators of examination fraud. “Indian telecom Reliance is sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE) via a rogue method called BGP hijacking,” Pavel Durov maintained, stating that the perceived interference appears targeted. “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.”
Government representatives defended the emergency measures under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act as critical to maintaining public order during high-stakes academic testing. The high court is expected to rule on the proportionality of the emergency digital block in its upcoming sessions.
