Telegram moves Delhi HC against Centre's temporary ban ahead of NEET-UG re-test

Messaging platform Telegram on Wednesday moved the Delhi High Court challenging the Centre's decision to temporarily block access to the app in India ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination.

The plea was mentioned before a bench of Justice Tejas Karia, which agreed to hear the matter later in the day.

The challenge comes a day after the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced that access to Telegram would remain restricted in India till June 22, covering the June 21 NEET-UG re-examination and its immediate aftermath.

The NTA said the platform had also been directed to disable its message-editing feature for already-posted messages in India till June 30.

The agency said the measures were aimed at tackling the organised use of Telegram by cheating rackets and misinformation networks ahead of the medical entrance examination.

According to the NTA, Telegram's message-editing functionality had allegedly been used in recent examinations to insert actual question papers into older messages after exams were conducted and circulate screenshots as purported proof that papers had leaked beforehand.

The platform-level action follows weeks of coordinated efforts by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversaw the takedown of several Telegram channels, groups and bots allegedly involved in examination-related fraud.

The NTA said channel-by-channel enforcement had proved insufficient to address the problem.

Several channels operating under names such as "PAPER LEAKED NEET", "Re-NEET 2026", "Private Mafia" and "REE NEET MAFIAA" had allegedly sought money from candidates and their families by claiming to offer access to the examination paper, it said.

Telegram founder and chief executive officer Pavel Durov said the ban would hurt ordinary users rather than those responsible for leaking examination material.

"This punishes 150M+ ordinary Telegram users in India — not the insiders who leaked the exam materials," Durov said in a post on X.

"And the ban hasn't stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps," he added.

Durov said Telegram had removed hundreds of channels sharing leaked examination materials and related scams in India over the past few weeks and was making the "edited" label more visible to prevent backdating scams.

"Telegram is a force for good. Banning it — even temporarily — is a mistake," he said.

The NEET-UG 2026 re-examination is scheduled to be held on June 21.