Delhi High Court on Friday refused to grant any relief to Telegram with regard to the Centre’s decision to restrict access to the messaging platform ahead of the NEET-UG retest on June 21.

Dismissing Telegram’s plea challenging the block, Justice Tejas Karia said the government decision was proportionate because the app could facilitate “automated dissemination” of a large amount of content.

“The blocking of individual content was undertaken pursuant to the 2021 Rules, whereas the Impugned Order under Section 69A of the Information of Technology (IT) Act was passed upon consideration of the overall architectural features of Telegram, which rendered it impracticable to prevent misuse of the platform through the less restrictive measure of blocking individual items of content alone,” the court said in its 39-page order.

Section 69A of the IT Act empowers the Centre or any officer specially authorised by it to issue directions to block public access to any information in the interest of sovereignty and security and to prevent incitement related to any cognisable offence.

The court said the government’s decision was “well-reasoned” and did not suffer from “non-application of mind”, as alleged by Telegram.

The Centre blocked Telegram till June 22 on the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) recommendation after the NEET-UG on May 3 — in which 22 lakh students had appeared — was cancelled following a paper leak. The NTA conducts the medical entrance exam.

The court observed that the government decision was necessary to prevent further disruptions and rule out paper-leak concerns.

“The limited temporal scope of these measures demonstrates that they
are narrowly tailored and
confined to the period strictly necessary for securing the stated objective,” the court said.

“It is evident that narrower measures, including the takedown of specific bots and channels, were ineffective having regard to the particular nature and architecture of the Telegram platform,” the court said, flagging the bot ecosystems, which facilitate automated dissemination of content, and privacy policy that enables concealment of user identities.

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital rights advocacy organisation, said the Telegram ban showed that “we’ve moved from fixing systems to banning tools”.

“Banning Telegram is a convenient way to look like the government is doing something without actually doing anything at all,” it said.

The IFF said a blanket block, however brief, restricted the lawful expression
and the right to receive information of millions of
Indians.

“The State cannot switch off a service used by lakhs to answer the wrongdoing of a few, and cannot do it through an order no one affected is allowed to read,” the IFF posted on X.