Extension of "information" to telegram

Telegram did not adopt a “broad” interpretation of “information”, noting that the government acting through Section 69A can only block access to “specific information” and not impose blanket restrictions on the entire intermediary platform. | Photo credit: Reuters

The Union government temporarily blocked Telegram to protect the sanctity of the National Examination for University Entrance Tests (NEET-UG) 2026 with a single interpretive trick that compressed the entire platform of the intermediary into the term: “information”.

This ban received the support of the Delhi High Court by expanding the meaning of “information” under the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000.

The provisions of § 2 paragraph 1 letter (v) of the Act has traditionally defined “information” in small units, including data, messages, text, images, sound, voice, codes, computer programs, software and databases. The Telegram ban changed this legal interpretation.

The government argued that an online platform like Telegram is an “aggregation” or “compilation” of these units. By reading entire platforms operated by companies that were corporate in nature as “information” under the Act, the government effectively weaponized the content blocking provisions of Section 69A.

Section 69A of the IT Act gives the government the power to issue directions to block public access to any “information” through a computer resource. Here, the interpretation of the center led to the successful replacement of the word “information” with the expression “entire intermediary platform”.

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In its order dated June 19, the High Court supported the Centre’s view that “the power to block under Section 69A of the IT Act goes beyond individual parts of content and in view of its broad legislative scope includes the software architecture, code base, database and program ecosystem constituting the application”. The court concluded that the Center’s interpretation is consistent with the legislature’s intent to give the term “information” a “broad and technology-neutral meaning.”

The single-judge Bench also agreed that the ban met the proportionality test because Telegram’s architectural design, particularly its bulk multiplication functionality and ability to modify the date and time, did not allow it by design to prevent abuse during the window of critical scrutiny.

Such a blanket ban disproportionately affected the very section he considered protected. Many of Telegram’s 150 million users were students and educators who used the platform to share study materials and educational resources for NEET preparation. Restrictions threw out the baby with the bathwater by affecting legitimate content and legitimate users.

The platform’s arguments are supported by the Supreme Court judgment in the Anuradha Bhasin case on digital freedoms, which states that restrictions on fundamental rights must be reasonable and only the least restrictive measures must be applied.

Telegram argued that the standard of legal compliance expected of an intermediary is one of reasonable care and due diligence, not perfection.

The larger question still remains whether or not the state’s blocking of an entire platform, which limits the rights of millions of users to target a limited group of criminal actors, through an expansive interpretation of the term “information” was unreasonable.

The High Court reasoned that the ban had a “limited time frame” to “secure the stated objective”.

Published – 23 Jun 2026 21:26 IST