New Delhi, 17 June (H.S.): Social media messaging platform Telegram has challenged the Central government's order temporarily suspending its services in India until June 22, ahead of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) re-examination scheduled for June 21. The Delhi High Court is set to hear the petition later today.

The matter was mentioned for urgent hearing before the vacation bench headed by Justice Tejas Karia. Appearing on behalf of Telegram, senior advocate Madhav Khosla requested an immediate hearing, following which the court agreed to take up the matter on Wednesday.

In its petition, Telegram submitted that it has nearly 150 million users in India and argued that the government's decision would cause significant inconvenience to its vast user base.

The temporary suspension was ordered after Telegram was allegedly used in connection with the NEET examination paper leak case. Following the allegations, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology directed that the messaging platform remain temporarily inaccessible in India until June 22.

In a separate order, the ministry also instructed Telegram to disable its message-editing feature until June 30.

Telegram has challenged both directives before the Delhi High Court, seeking judicial relief against the temporary suspension of its services and the order requiring the disabling of its message-editing feature.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar