NEW DELHI: Messaging platform Telegram on Wednesday moved the Delhi High Court, challenging the Central government's decision to temporarily suspend its services across India ahead of the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21.
The matter was mentioned before the Vacation Bench of Justice Tejas Karia, who agreed to list the case for hearing later in the day.
Telegram has challenged the restrictions imposed pursuant to directions issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, following recommendations made by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
The Union government on Tuesday announced a temporary restriction on Telegram's operations in India until June 22, covering the examination day and its immediate aftermath, as part of efforts to prevent alleged paper leaks, misinformation campaigns and cheating networks ahead of the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21.
According to the NTA, the temporary restriction became necessary after other measures, including channel-specific takedowns and enforcement actions, were found insufficient to address the scale of the problem.
Apart from restricting access to the platform, authorities also directed Telegram to disable its message-editing feature in India till June 30. The NTA claimed that the feature had previously been misused to create fabricated evidence of question paper leaks by editing older messages and replacing attachments while retaining the original timestamp. (IANS)