A New Delhi court has rejected the messaging app Telegram’s appeal to overturn a temporary ban introduced by India’s federal government.
The restrictions were imposed on the popular messaging app earlier this week to prevent its use by “cheating rackets” to defraud candidates taking a nationwide medical entrance examination.
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test held last month was cancelled following allegations of question leaks and exam irregularities; about 2.2 million students will take the retest on Sunday.
The Delhi High Court found the government’s action legal and reasonable. The government is “empowered... to issue directions for blocking public access to Telegram,” it ruled.
The ban is effective June 16 to June 22, with the app’s message-editing feature blocked until June 30. The government says the feature was misused to circulate back-dated messages, creating the impression that exam questions had been leaked in advance.
India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology invoked the provisions of its information technology law, which enables authorities to block access to online sites in the “interest of sovereignty and integrity of India,” to temporarily ban the app founded by Russian tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov.
The ban “punishes 150 million+ ordinary Telegram users in India – not the insiders who leaked the exam materials,” Durov had posted on X. “The ban hasn’t stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps,” he said.
India is Telegram’s biggest market by downloads, although Meta’s WhatsApp remains the top messaging platform in the country of 1.4 billion.
The legal battle is the most high-profile case between a global tech giant and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. In 2025, it reduced the number of officials who can order content takedowns following a bitter legal battle with Elon Musk’s X.