The Delhi High Court on Friday upheld the Centre’s decision to temporarily block messaging platform Telegram for six days ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination scheduled on June 21, Sunday.
The court held that the government had sufficient grounds to invoke its emergency powers and impose restrictions on the platform in the interest of maintaining public order and preventing the spread of unlawful content linked to the examination.
Justice Tejas Karia dismissed Telegram’s challenge to the government’s order, observing that the decision was based on relevant material and did not suffer from any lack of application of mind, as alleged by the company.
The court noted that the content and information circulated through Telegram fall within the scope of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which authorises the government to restrict access to online content under specified circumstances.
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“There were so many students who were affected. The second aspect is that, due to one incident, can you block the entire platform? There is a power that can be exercised. To what extent it can be exercised is the question” asked the Court to the government, as reported by Hindusthan Times.
Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued that blocking Telegram was a measure of last resort. He told the court that the platform had failed to effectively curb unlawful material being circulated through various channels operating on its network.
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Affidavit Highlights Concerns Over Platform Features
In its affidavit, the government argued that Telegram’s design and operational features create what it described as a “unique ecosystem” that could be exploited for activities such as examination leaks, cyber fraud and unlawful conduct.
The affidavit stated that Telegram’s technical architecture differs from many other intermediaries and presents challenges for authorities seeking to prevent, detect and investigate illegal activities conducted through the platform.
“…Telegram’s combination of large subscriber capacity, anonymity features, cloud-based architecture, and ease of recreation of channels creates a persistent enforcement challenge, whereby unlawful examination-leak ecosystems can continue to operate notwithstanding individual takedown actions taken against specific channels or accounts,” the affidavit, quoted by the HT, said.
The government also pointed to Telegram’s dedicated bot infrastructure, which allows automated accounts to operate without continuous human supervision. According to the affidavit, Telegram had reportedly disabled more than 150 bots associated with the dissemination of NEET-related content.
What did Telegram say?
Senior advocate Dhruv Mehta, representing Telegram, contended that the blocking order was arbitrary and imposed without adequate consideration of its impact. He argued that the restriction affected more than 150 million users as well as businesses operating through the platform.
Telegram’s petition claimed that the order amounted to a disproportionate restriction on freedom of speech and expression and unfairly targeted the platform while other social media intermediaries continued to operate without similar restrictions.
