New Delhi, June 18 (IANS) The Delhi High Court is slated to resume hearing on Thursday afternoon a plea filed by messaging platform Telegram challenging the Centre’s decision to temporarily suspend its services across India ahead of the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21.  As per the cause list published by the Delhi High Court, the matter -- Telegram FZ LLC & Anr. vs Union of India & Ors. -- has been listed at 2:30 p.m. before the vacation bench of Justice Tejas Karia.The writ petition questions the restrictions imposed pursuant to directions issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, following recommendations made by the National Testing Agency (NTA).On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court had sought the Centre’s response on Telegram’s plea and granted liberty to the respondent authorities to place their reply and relevant documents on record.The matter was taken up after Telegram sought an urgent hearing before the Delhi High Court, contending that the temporary suspension of its services and related restrictions were disproportionate and adversely affected millions of users across the country.

The Union government on Tuesday announced a temporary restriction on Telegram’s operations in India till June 22, covering the examination day and its immediate aftermath, as part of efforts to prevent alleged paper leaks, misinformation campaigns and cheating networks ahead of the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination.According to the NTA, the temporary restriction became necessary after other measures, including channel-specific takedowns and enforcement actions, were found insufficient to address the scale of the problem.Apart from restricting access to the platform, authorities also directed Telegram to disable its message-editing feature in India till June 30. The NTA claimed that the feature had previously been misused to create fabricated evidence of question paper leaks by editing older messages and replacing attachments while retaining the original timestamp.The agency further alleged that several Telegram channels operating under names such as “Paper Leaked NEET”, “Re-NEET 2026” and “Private Mafia” had been demanding payments from candidates in exchange for purported access to examination papers.

Meanwhile, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov criticised the temporary suspension, saying it had affected more than 150 million users in India.In a post on X, Durov said Telegram had already removed hundreds of channels in recent weeks that were allegedly involved in sharing leaked examination materials and running scams targeting students in India.The NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination is being conducted following allegations of question paper leaks during the original examination held on May 3.

/IANS