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The Union government claimed before the Delhi High Court on Thursday that messaging platform Telegram was becoming the “new dark web”, enabling illegal activities and linking criminals, Bar and Bench reported.
“Criminals have rapidly adopted Telegram to post links on channels that connect to dark web forums through deep web links, making it hard for the authorities to track and attribute criminals,” the legal news outlet quoted the government as having told the court.
The dark web is a hidden layer of the internet that cannot be accessed through regular search engines and browsers.
The government made the claim in an affidavit filed to oppose Telegram’s petition challenging an order issued on Tuesday restricting access to its services in India until June 22, ahead of the undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test re-examination.
The court had asked the government about the extent of the alleged illegal activity on Telegram, noting that any digital service could be misused.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology restricted access to Telegram till June 22, the day after the re-examination of the entrance test for medical college admissions concludes.
The ministry also directed the platform, under the Information Technology Rules, to disable its message-editing feature till June 30. The National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam, alleged that the feature was used “to fabricate after-the-event ‘paper leak’ evidence”.
The NEET-UG exam was conducted on May 3, but was cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.
On Wednesday, the High Court had agreed to hear Telegram’s plea and asked the government to file its response.
The government has argued that the measure is necessary to protect the integrity of the re-test that will take place on Sunday, Bar and Bench reported.
The authorities have argued that Telegram channels were being used to distribute leaked or fake question papers, coordinate fraud and manipulate time stamps of messages through the platform’s editing feature.
On Thursday, the court reserved its order in the matter.
During the hearing on Wednesday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that the authorities had repeatedly raised concerns with Telegram about alleged misuse of the application, but the platform failed to take any measures to prevent it. He said that several channels were allegedly being used to offer leaked examination questions in exchange for money and that examples had been shared with the company.
Telegram has argued that the government had singled it out, violating Article 14 of the Constitution that guarantees the right to equality. It also contended that the blocking order had affected more than 150 million users.
The government’s decision is based on an “impermissible premise that misuse by a subset of users justifies blocking of an entire platform”, the company told the court.
On Thursday, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that first the government announced that Indian Air Force aircraft will be used to transport the question papers and now Telegram has been banned. “Will this stop paper leaks?” he asked.
“They don’t want to stop the paper leaks,” he alleged, adding that the “business” was lucrative and the “money was reaching the top”.
More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the May 3 test. However, the exam was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.
The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.
The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union education ministry. It has invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act.
The Opposition and the Cockroach Janta Party, a political campaign, has been demanding Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation for the alleged mismanagement in holding competitive exams.
The 2024 examination was also hit by allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks, leading to nationwide protests.
Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.
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