New Delhi, June 17: A temporary federal ban on the instant messaging application Telegram has prompted the company to file an emergency petition with the Delhi High Court. The executive restriction was deployed by information technology authorities to neutralize organized cheating networks ahead of the scheduled NEET-UG re-test on Sunday. Justice Tejas Karia accepted the matter for expedited consideration after legal teams argued that the block cut off communication services for more than 150 million users within a single day.
The specialized intervention explicitly disables the application’s unique message-editing tools for the remainder of the month to stop scammers from modifying timestamps on old posts to mimic authentic examination leaks. Testing regulators verified that the platform had become a primary hub for fraudulent channels seeking to exploit vulnerable medical aspirants.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov maintained that the platform is currently the target of a broader commercial conflict orchestrated by major domestic rivals. “Indian telecom Reliance is sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE) via a rogue method called BGP hijacking,” the company founder stated. “The sabotage seems intentional, as Reliance has ignored multiple reports. This may be part of a competitive war, as Reliance is partially owned by Meta, the company behind WhatsApp.”
Independent technical specialists dismissed the platform’s claims as a misinterpretation of local corporate infrastructure. Sector experts stated that the network routing anomalies cited by the company trace back to an entirely independent telecom provider that shares no operational links with the conglomerate affiliated with Meta.
The platform’s management declared that global network administrators should actively filter routing data from the implicated networks to protect user access. “Such abuse of global Internet routing is alarming,” Pavel Durov affirmed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Reliance/WhatsApp were also behind the recent lobbying effort to ban Telegram in India.”
The National Testing Agency declared that the enforcement remains a limited, preventative measure that will be dismantled immediately following the conclusion of the national re-examination cycle. The upcoming judicial review will evaluate whether the sweeping digital block complies with statutory public order guidelines.
