A New Delhi court on Friday rejected Telegram's appeal against a temporary ban in India, a setback for the messaging app which had challenged the prohibition imposed to curb alleged exam-related fraud.
India will conduct its national undergraduate medical entrance exam on Sunday, a month after it cancelled the results of the same test after allegations that the questions were leaked in advance.
The unprecedented ban on Telegram until June 22 was announced this week by India's IT ministry over concerns about channels on the app claiming to have questions from the upcoming exam for sale. Even if the questions were fake, that would defraud candidates, it said.
The ban, which took Telegram offline and removed it from app stores, was implemented within hours by Indian telecom companies as well as the likes of Google and Apple. It has prompted the most high-profile court tussle between a global tech giant and the Indian government this year.
In the ruling on Friday, Delhi High Court judge Tejas Karia said the government orders banning the app were reasoned orders and had strictly followed the legal procedure.
Telegram has more than 150 million users in India, its biggest market, and its founder Pavel Durov has publicly criticised the ban, saying it punishes the platform's users, while the exam leaks have moved elsewhere.
The ban was preceded by days of private sparring between the two sides in which the Indian government rebuked Telegram for not proactively removing accounts offering purported leaked exam papers, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Telegram rebutted the government's account of the meetings in its court filing, saying it was "one-sided and inaccurate" and "deliberately" omitted details of the company's proactive processes. Telegram has said it took down more than 900 links involving unlawful exam-related content.
