India court upholds Telegram ban over leaked exam papers

Telegram lost its bid to overturn India’s temporary block after a New Delhi court ruled the government’s action was legal and reasonable. The order briefly took the app offline and removed it from app stores, turning a fight over leaked exam papers into a test case for how far India can go in restricting major digital platforms.

The dispute centers on NEET (UG) 2026, a re-examination scheduled for June 21 from 2:00 PM to 5:15 PM IST. India’s National Testing Agency said the test would be held across 551 cities in India and 14 cities abroad for more than 22.79 lakh candidates, with over 2 lakh personnel mobilized to secure the process, including biometric checks, CCTV monitoring and police-escorted transport of materials.

The government’s blocking order, issued on June 16 under Section 69A of the IT Act, said Telegram had been repeatedly used for fake exam papers, misleading information and fraud tied to the medical entrance test. Officials argued that targeted takedowns had not stopped what they described as a fraudulent ecosystem, and that blocked channels could be recreated easily while users could hide phone numbers and rely on usernames. The NTA also said it had filed complaints with cybercrime authorities, including the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, the Home Ministry and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The move drew a sharp rebuke from Internet Freedom Foundation, which called the ban a “band-aid solution” and “disproportionate.” The group argued that Section 69A allows blocking specific information, not shutting down an entire intermediary, and said the order was overbroad and incompatible with constitutional proportionality standards. The foundation pointed to Supreme Court rulings in Shreya Singhal v Union of India, Justice K S Puttaswamy v Union of India and Anuradha Bhasin v Union of India.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the ban punished “150 million ordinary users” in India rather than the people behind the leak, and said the material had simply moved to other apps. Telegram has more than 150 million users in India, its largest market, making the ruling commercially significant as well as politically charged.

The case lands in a country that has already fought repeated battles with tech companies over takedown powers and content control. India reduced the number of officials able to order content removals after a separate fight with X, and the Telegram ruling now strengthens the government’s hand at a moment when exam fraud, platform liability and speech rights are colliding more directly than ever.