New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday (June 18) questioned the Centre for banning the entire Telegram platform for conducting the NEET UG 2026 test that is scheduled to take place on June 21. The single-justice bench's observation came during the hearing of a plea filed by the messaging app challenging the temporary ban. The Court also observed that it was fully conscious of the seriousness of the situation and the impact the alleged NEET paper leak had on thousands of students. The Bench said the central issue was not whether the government possessed the power to act but whether that power could extend to blocking an entire platform. "Whether the rights of an entire class of users could be curtailed to protect another section of citizens," Justice Tejas Karia said. The court raised concerns over the proportionality of imposing a platform-wide ban to tackle specific violations. "The question is whether, to curb a particular instance of misuse, you can ban the whole app. Let us focus on that. There is a power, and that power can be exercised. The issue is to what extent that power can be exercised,” the Court remarked. "Telegram has been identified as a preferred platform for terrorist and other unlawful activities because of its architectural design," Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said. However, Mehta further clarified that the present case was not concerned with terrorism-related allegations. “Right now, we are not concerned with that, so I am not going into it," he said. The Solicitor General argued that Telegram’s architecture allows an entire audience of over one lakh users to be shifted from one channel to another almost instantly through mirror channels and bots. “That is their architecture. It is their business choice,” he submitted. The Centre also told the HC that these problems do not arise with other intermediaries like Facebook, etc., as they have names and URLs and they operate on the internet. The Centre also pointed out that Telegram operates through the cloud. Senior Advocate Dhruv Mehta, appearing for Telegram, submitted that the messaging app had acted on requests received from authorities and had taken down around 1,300 URLs linked to objectionable content. He also posed a question to the Centre about the rights of 150 million users of Telegram in India. The Centre on Thursday also submitted its affidavit, justifying its ban on Telegram until June 22 in the wake of the NEET re-examination scheduled for June 21. Visit Times Now for the Latest news, India News, and breaking stories from around the World. With over 18 years of experience in broadcast and print journalism, Bhavatosh Singh has been with Times Now since 2005. Primary areas of interest incl... View More