Messaging app Telegram has filed a petition in court that seeks to lift a temporary government order in India blocking access to the platform. The restriction was introduced to stop cheating in medical entrance exams, but Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, claims the platform was unfairly singled out.
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India temporarily blocked Telegram over alleged medical exam leak-related cheating concerns.
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Telegram has filed a court petition to overturn the restriction.
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Founder Pavel Durov says the ban unfairly punishes millions of users rather than the leakers.
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The company argues leaks are simply moving to other platforms, not being stopped.
India began blocking on Tuesday and will continue to do so until June 22nd. The measure was put in place to prevent future medical students from cheating on their medical school entry exams.
Durov has taken to X to express his dissatisfaction with the decision.
He claims India’s IT ministry banned Telegram for a week after someone shared leaked exam questions, and that India’s response to the incident “punishes 150M+ ordinary Telegram users” in the country, and not the “insiders who leaked the exam materials.”
“And the ban hasn't stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps,” Durov said, echoing what the company argues in court as well.
In its petition, Telegram says the service has been singled out while other social media platforms continue to be accessible and operate as usual. That supposedly violates Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
"[The] impugned Order proceeds on the impermissible premise that misuse by a subset of users justifies the blocking of an entire platform. Such an approach, if upheld, would enable indiscriminate suspension of digital platforms, severely undermining constitutional protections of free speech and access to information," the plea contends.
However, this isn’t the first instance when India has had to take similar measures to ensure fair exams. Per Reuters’ reporting, last month India had to cancel a key undergraduate entrance exam for medical colleges after authorities began an investigation into allegations that its questions had also been leaked.
India’s move to place restrictions when it comes to student exams isn’t unprecedented.
For example, as millions of high school students were taking the "gaokao" college entrance exam in China, the country's biggest tech firms paused their AI tools. To prevent cheating, apps such as Tencent, ByteDance, and Moonshot AI disabled features like photo recognition and real-time question-answering.
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