The Government of India has decided to temporarily suspend the use of Telegram until June 22, 2026, following concerns that criminal groups were using the platform to target students preparing to sit university entrance examinations.
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Announcement by NTA
The decision was announced on Tuesday by the National Testing Agency (NTA), with the aim of preventing sellers of fake examination papers and distributors of misinformation during the period leading up to the NEET (UG) medical university entrance examination scheduled for June 21, 2026.
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The suspension is to be enforced nationwide until one day after the examination.
Restrictions on Telegram Features
The NTA also requested Telegram to disable its message-editing feature until June 30, stating that the feature is used after examinations have been conducted to fabricate evidence suggesting that exam questions were known in advance, when in fact such claims are false.
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The decision was taken under Section 69A of India’s Information Technology Act.
Telegram’s Response
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov criticized the decision on X, stating that suspending the platform for a week punishes Telegram users in India rather than those involved in stealing examination papers.
He said, “Exam thieves have moved to other platforms.”
He emphasized that Telegram had recently removed hundreds of channels linked to such activities and had improved indicators showing when messages have been edited in order to prevent such fraud.
NTA’s Justification
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh stated that preventing these criminal groups from accessing their “customers” (students) would help curb the malpractice, even if they attempt to use VPN technology from outside the country.
The NEET (UG) examination is being conducted again because, when it was first held last month, reports emerged alleging that the examination may have been leaked and sold to students. As a result, the previous results were invalidated, a retest was approved, and a nationwide investigation was launched.
Telegram’s Market in India
India is Telegram’s largest market in the world, with approximately 354 million monthly users, and the application has been downloaded around 600 million times since its launch.
By the time this article was published, Google had already removed the application from the Play Store in India, although some users still had access to it and to certain features, including the ability to edit previously sent messages.
