Why Telegram ban expands scope of IT Act’s blocking powers

A block that lasts six days can settle a question of law for years. On Friday (June 19), the Delhi High Court upheld the Centre's temporary block on Telegram across the country. The block runs until Monday (June 22), a day after the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination on June 21.

Also read: SIR verdict: Operation successful, patient under observation

The immediate aim was limited. The government wanted to keep scams, rumours and fake “paper leaks” away from the retest. The lasting question is broader. Can the State block an entire platform under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act (2000), and does such a block survive a proportionality test? Justice Tejas Karia answered yes to both. The judgment is worth reading for its reasoning, not only its result.

From engagement to a block

The dispute did not begin as an emergency. On May 21, the National Testing Agency (NTA) informed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of alleged misuse of Telegram around NEET. MeitY issued a notice on June 1 and met Telegram and the NTA on June 3. On June 9, it shared a list of channels, accounts and bots. Telegram acted on much of it, saying it disabled 900 of the 1,300 URLs flagged.

Telegram did not dispute that misuse existed. Its case was that it had cooperated and that the remedy went too far. It said it ran AI and human moderation, removed hundreds of offending links, and disabled more than 150 bots.

The government was not satisfied. It said offending channels kept returning through backups, rotated handles and burner accounts. On June 16, the MeitY secretary invoked the emergency route under the 2009 Blocking Rules, and Telegram was ordered blocked within an hour. A statutory committee heard Telegram, the NTA and the Home Ministry on June 17.

Also read: 'Telegram is the new dark web’: Centre tells Delhi HC amid ban row ahead of NEET re-exam

The secretary confirmed the block in a reasoned order on June 18. Telegram challenged both orders, saying the State was punishing 150 million users for the conduct of a few.

Why govt said takedowns would not hold

The government's core case was about design, not volume. It argued that Telegram lets unlawful networks rebuild faster than they can be taken down. Three unique features of Telegram were noted during the hearing. First, scale: a single public channel can hold up to two lakh members, so one post reaches a vast audience at once. Second, automation: the government said one user could create as many as 40 bots, which then spawn and message without human effort. Third, evasion: when a bot or channel is blocked, the audience is redirected to a mirror, and the activity resumes.

There was also an investigative problem. Telegram is cloud-based and lets users hide behind usernames rather than phone numbers. The government argued that this keeps police from reaching the actual user. Account deletion, it added, can erase evidence that other platforms preserve. It placed a record before the court. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre - I4C, it said, had sought corrective steps from Telegram at least 35 times since October 2024.

Also read: Why India keeps removing cartoons from textbooks, and getting it all wrong

An I4C report dated June 10 listed misuse beyond exams, including malware, mule bank accounts and child sexual abuse material. On the immediate threat, Justice Karia made a practical point. Once a paper is leaked, he observed, the damage is instant and hard to undo.

The editing feature and the backdating fear

A second strand concerned Telegram's message-editing tool. A user can change an old message, including its attachment, while keeping the original timestamp. The government said this enables a backdating scam. After the exam, an operator could edit a post to suggest the paper had leaked earlier. It told the court this had happened in 2024.

The contest now shifts to the facts of each case, which makes the depth of judicial review the decisive factor. Future benches will weigh the evidence: how real the threat is, why the architecture defeats narrower action, and why reach and duration are confined.

Telegram's own chief executive used the same term. In a post on X on June 16, Pavel Durov said the platform was making its “edited” label more visible to prevent backdating scams. The committee read this as an acknowledgement of the risk. Telegram said the label change was an architectural fix that would take time. On that footing, the order disabled editing until June 30.

Telegram's answer

Telegram did not dispute that misuse existed. Its case was that it had cooperated and that the remedy went too far. It pointed to its record, saying it ran AI and human moderation, removed hundreds of offending links, and disabled more than 150 bots. It also questioned the process: the misuse had been known since May, so it asked how an emergency could arise suddenly in mid-June.

Its main legal point was textual. Section 69A, it argued, lets the government block “information,” not an entire intermediary or service. It relied on Anuradha Bhasin v Union of India (2020) case, where the Supreme Court required that restrictions on online rights be proportionate and minimal.

It reached back, further too. Citing the State of Madras v V.G. Row (1952) case, it stressed that a restriction must be reasonable, not excessive.

The government met this on its own terms. The Attorney General, R. Venkataramani, argued that a platform unable to ensure accountability cannot then invoke proportionality. He likened Telegram to a Frankenstein's creation and asked where the State could turn if it took no preventive steps.

Also read: 8,630 complaints against Indian judges in 10 years, outcomes undisclosed

The Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta, read Anuradha Bhasin the other way. He noted that even in an internet shutdown, only a small share of users are miscreants, yet the larger public good can prevail. The government also invoked In Re: Ramlila Maidan incident v Home Secretary (2012) case, where the Court accepted that authorities may act on a perceived threat to public order.

It added two points: no individual user had come to court, and Telegram is a UAE-based company.

Can an application be “information”?

This was the judgment's most consequential question. Section 69A allows the government to block “any information” on listed grounds, one of which is public order. Section 2(1)(v) defines information to include codes, computer programmes and software. An application is software.

On that reading, the court held, an application falls within “information,” and the Centre was empowered to block Telegram as a whole.

The conclusion widens a familiar power. A provision associated with specific content now reaches the platform that carries it. The same logic could extend to other networks, messaging services or storage apps. The remaining safeguard, the court held, is proportionality.

How the court applied proportionality

The court used the four-part test from Anuradha Bhasin: a legitimate aim, a rational link, necessity and the least restrictive means. It found the aim legitimate, since protecting a national exam and averting public disorder are proper objectives. It found the link rational, because disabling a platform allegedly used for exam fraud serves that aim. On necessity, it accepted the executive's finding that, given the architecture, narrower steps had repeatedly failed to hold.

Also read: From 2G to coal, why India’s biggest ‘scams’ keep ending in acquittals

Duration carried weight in the balance. The block ends on June 22 and the editing freeze on June 30. That short, event-linked window, the court held, kept the measure narrowly tailored, so it satisfied proportionality. The court accepted the record that entity-specific takedowns had not worked here. It did not separately map the options between link removal and a full block. Whether such intermediate steps are workable in a calmer timeframe is a question a future challenge may test.

The 150 million users

The block also affected a large lawful population: students sharing notes, journalists, businesses and ordinary users. Justice Karia had pressed this at the hearing, asking whether the rights of 150 million users could yield because one group faced an exam. The judgment weighed that interest against the State's aim and the platform's design, and treated the short duration as central to the balance. Reach and duration pull in different directions. A six-day limit is brief, while 150 million users is a wide footprint. The court resolved that tension in favour of the limited, time-bound measure.

What it settles, and what it leaves open

The result is tied closely to NEET, to the claimed failure of takedowns and to the short life of the order. A future government cannot read it as a licence for an open-ended ban. It must still cite a Section 69A ground, record reasons, follow the Blocking Rules and meet proportionality. What the judgment settles is the threshold: a platform can no longer argue that the State simply lacks the power to block it whole.

Also read: Sabarimala case: Why every faith has a stake in the nine-judge SC Bench?

The contest now shifts to the facts of each case, which makes the depth of judicial review the decisive factor. Future benches will weigh the evidence: how real the threat is, why the architecture defeats narrower action, and why reach and duration are confined. Tested closely on those points, the power stays within bounds. The block will lift on June 22, but the reading of the law will remain.