Prateek Tanmay
4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jun 19, 2026 02:11 AM IST
The Delhi High Court on Thursday concluded arguments and will pronounce the judgment today in Telegram’s plea challenging the government’s order temporarily blocking the messaging platform across India until June 22, even as the government termed the platform as a “Frankenstein”.
The government expressed apprehension that if permitted to operate before the NEET (UG) retest, scheduled on June 21, students may come out on the streets and indulge in prohibited activities, in case something goes wrong.
A question repeatedly posed by Justice Tejas Karia through the nearly two-hour hearing was whether the temporary blocking order is proportional given that the order is issued by exercising powers under IT Act Section 69A, which are emergency powers.
Justice Karia further orally said, “You’re concerned with a sweeping order banning the app … today there are certain concerns or complaints that it is not conducive to certain exams which are to be conducted. We are all alive to the situation of what happened … without that one particular instance, can you block the entire app? To what extent can IT Act section 69A be exercised? … Has it been exercised in the circumstances which warranted that exercise? … The question here is, can you block someone else’s right (Telegram) to protect someone else’s right (students)?”
Notably, while the blocking order had cited that the action is necessitated “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India” and “public order”, the government at the outset on Thursday gave up on the aspect of “sovereignty and integrity”.
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Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said, “Sovereignty and integrity would be an overambitious argument, I would confine it to public order and preventing incitement to commission of cognisable offence.”
Justifying that the action taken is proportional, Mehta relied on the Anuradha Bhasin judgment of SC, which dealt with blanket internet suspension in J&K in the aftermath of abrogation of Article 370, to assert that such temporary blocking is permissible.
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Additionally, Attorney General R Venkataramani, appearing for the government, also submitted, “..somebody who can’t take accountability or responsibility, cannot plead proportionality. It is a unique and peculiar situation and therefore to apply proportionality indiscriminately in every specific context like this would be completely misconceived.”
Different architecture ‘real problem’
A pointed and oft repeated argument by the government was Telegram’s distinct architecture which makes it the “real problem”. SG Mehta argued, “The architectural design of the platform is such that they cannot prevent certain things … unlike other intermediaries like WhatsApp etc, they have certain systems in place and their architecture is different and therefore what is being done on this platform (Telegram) cannot happen on the other platforms.”
Telegram reportedly disabled more than 150 bots associated with dissemination of NEET-related content. SG Mehta also added that disabling a particular bot does not necessarily disable the underlying unlawful activity, and the platform also “conceals critical user identifiers, including phone numbers”. Additionally, Telegram permits groups of up to 2 lakh members and public channels capable of broadcasting content, thus resulting in amplified reach.
