India Bans Pavel Durov Telegram: GRAM and Crypto Hammered, Whatsapp Accused

GRAM dropped between 2% after India ordered Google and Apple to delist Telegram from their app stores, cutting off access for an estimated 104 to 150 million users, and Pavel Durov is not happy. It’s cutting Telegram’s single largest national user base.

Executed under Section 69A of India’s Information Technology Act, it is explicitly temporary, tied to the NEET-UG medical entrance re-examination scheduled for June 21.

The entire investment thesis for the TON blockchain and its native token rests on Telegram as a distribution moat, a billion-user platform that embeds the chain natively into daily messaging. One government’s Section 69A order just demonstrated that the moat has a trapdoor.

This will likely affect the crypto market too, with India as one of the largest countries with active crypto holders, and Telegram, alongside X, are where crypto communities are spending their days.

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What Has The Indian Government Done?

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, acting on a formal request from the National Testing Agency, invoked Section 69A of the IT Act to restrict access to Telegram ahead of the NEET-UG re-exam. The National Testing Agency had canceled the original May 3 exam amid allegations of paper leak, with Telegram channels implicated in distributing, and in some cases fabricating, leaked materials.

A separate government direction requires Telegram to disable its message-editing feature for Indian users until June 30. This is targeting the specific mechanism that investigators say cheating networks used to create backdated fake leak evidence.

As of today, the delisting order runs until June 22, 2026, or one day after the re-exam.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov responded on X with a sharp counter-allegation, accusing India telecom Reliance of using BGP hijacking. He noted that they are specifically abusing the Border Gateway Protocol via autonomous system number AS18101 to reroute and disrupt Telegram access for users outside India, including in the UAE.

BGP hijacking is a technique where a network operator broadcasts false routing information to redirect internet traffic; if genuine, it would mean Telegram’s connectivity problems extend well beyond the Indian government order. Pave; Durov also alleged that Reliance and WhatsApp lobbied jointly to impose the India ban, citing Reliance’s partial ownership by Meta as a motive.

A senior India telecom industry source flatly rejected the claims, telling the Economic Times that Pavel Durov conflated two entirely separate entities. Reliance Communications, which operates subsea cables and holds AS18101, and Reliance Industries Ltd, the parent of Jio, in which Meta holds only a minority stake with no operational role.

The source called the conflation either a misunderstanding of the sector or deliberate misinformation. Telegram, Jio, Meta, and Reliance Communications had not responded to media queries at the time of publication.

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Not Just Pavel Durov, Crypto Takes a Hit by India Decision

The bull case for Gram, or TON blockchain, has always been distribution, so is crypto in general. Telegram’s crypto funnel is running at scale. India, with 104 to 150 million Telegram users, is the largest single node in that funnel. Per the report, the disruption of crypto hit tap-to-earn games, daily quiz apps, and Web3 mini-apps immediately, with Indian users locked out of on-chain participation overnight.

The distinction between Durov’s two claims matters for the investment calculus. If the Indian ban is purely regulatory, a government acting on legitimate exam-integrity concerns, then it is bound by those concerns and ends when they are resolved.

If Durov’s allegation holds, and WhatsApp and Reliance entities lobbied to suppress a competitor, then the ban is an instrument of competitive warfare. Competitive suppression is episodic and typically reversible when the political cost rises. Genuine regulatory action can evolve into something structural.

The BGP hijacking claim, if verified, would be independently alarming; it would mean disruption to Telegram access is being manufactured at the routing layer, outside any government order, affecting users in third countries like the UAE.

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