Delhi HC junks Telegram’s plea against blocking order: ‘Govt adopted least restrictive measure’

The Centre had cited that the action is necessitated “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India” and “public order”.

Justice Tejas Karia pronounced in open court that the government has satisfied the test of proportionality, that is, it has adopted the least restrictive measure by blocking the application temporarily, with reasons. “After considering all arguments, we have found that given the emergency nature of the impugned order, the reasons (provided) are sufficient and the government has strictly followed procedures…”

The court upheld the government’s June 16 temporary blocking order as well as the June 18 order by a review committee of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India (MeitY) secretary, upholding the June 16 order.

The court observed that both orders are based on “relevant material and conclusion supported by reasons set out in the order.”

It held that the order does not suffer from the vice of non-application of mind, as Telegram had argued.

Importantly, Justice Karia also held that there was “no reason” to exclude an application such as Telegram from the definition of “information” under the Information Technology Act. The court thus concluded that Telegram falls within the ambit of Section 69A of the IT Act, which empowers the government to block public access to any information through a computer resource.

A detailed order is awaited.

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A key issue the court was concerned with while dealing with Telegram’s petition was whether blocking is a proportionate move. “The question here is, can you block someone else’s right (Telegram) to protect someone else’s right (students)?” Justice Karia had asked on Thursday during a nearly two-hour hearing.

What the government argued

The government’s key argument was that temporary blocking is necessitated to avert potential law and order issues.

Acknowledging that students are agitated over the NEET (UG) paper leak in May, and highlighting Telegram’s unique architecture that can rapidly lead to spread of misinformation, the government argued that temporary blocking is an “event-based” measure.

It said this has a definitive objective: not to mislead students and to ensure people do not doubt the integrity of the exams. More than 22 lakhs students will take the re-exam on June 21, after the May 3 exam was cancelled.

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The government, in its oral submissions, termed the platform as “Frankenstein”.

The government also flagged the platform’s ‘unique architecture’. Acknowledging that while Telegram may have the will to curb alleged criminal activities, the government pointed out that it is unable to, owing to the architecture which allows for anonymity and masking, quick proliferation of bots, and removal or editing of potential evidence of alleged wrongdoing.

What did Telegram say?

Telegram has largely argued on the procedural aspect of the temporary blocking order, highlighting that there was non-application of mind by the government and that the action is disproportionate.

It also pointed out the cascading effect that the temporary blocking has had on the platform’s largest market globally — it has 150 million users in India.

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Telegram, in its petition, submitted that blocking the whole application, “while allowing proliferation of similar content on other platforms, without any similar, let alone equal measures,” is violative of Article 14.

“… you’ve thrown the baby with the bathwater. Students are getting study materials (on the platform), apart from educators… there are business interests (operating out of the platform)… Article 14 (equality) is clearly violated, if not Article 19 (freedom of speech),” it argued.

Both Telegram and the government agree that the platform has been compliant with government’s directions for account-level blocking/removal from the platform.

The messaging app pointed out that following the paper leak and complying with government orders, it has taken action, including blocking/removal of over 1,300 accounts/users/channels.