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At the National Testing Agency (NTA)’s request, the Union government is blocking the messaging app Telegram in India for a week until Monday (June 22, 2026), following what the NTA described as a “response to the organised use of the platform by cheating rackets to defraud candidates appearing for the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination scheduled on 21 June 2026.”
On Tuesday evening, a few hours after the government’s order, at least one telecom operator had already blocked access to the service, and the app’s listing was taken down from Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
This is the first time that a messaging app operating at such a scale is being blocked in India by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, even for a limited period.
There are several Telegram groups circulating everything from pirated links to real-time news updates from established organisations; the platform has attracted many users as it offers features such as integrating bots into the platform, not typically found on other popular platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal.
In a video message, NTA Director General Abhishek Singh said, “To all parents, I say, please protect your child from financial fraud and from the panic these rackets are designed to create. NTA is committed to a fair, secure and credible examination, and to act against every person involved in spreading these scams.”
A Telegram spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While Telegram has taken down groups and content in group chats — which are not end-to-end encrypted on the platform — the platform does not appear to have ever voluntarily disabled access to its services in any country at a government’s request.
The NTA emphasised that this blocking was “calibrated and bounded in time,” and that it would be lifted later.
The agency said that several Telegram groups were advertising fake exam papers for the upcoming NEET exam and defrauding candidates willing to pay for them.
“Acting on inputs received continuously from NTA, from State law-enforcement agencies including the police forces of Bihar, Gujarat and Rajasthan, and from its own continuous monitoring of public channels and platforms, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, has secured the prompt take-down of a substantial number of Telegram channels, groups and bots whose names and content openly advertised their fraudulent and misleading purpose,” NTA said.
Additionally, many groups, the NTA said, were editing past messages with recent exam paper questions, to fake their capabilities in obtaining question papers in advance.
In separate directions, the IT Ministry said that it had ordered Telegram to disable message editing as well until June 30, to shut off “this avenue of fabrication for the post-examination window in which such artefacts have historically been deployed.”
IIT Madras director V. Kamakoti, in two videos published on Tuesday evening by the NTA, demonstrated a retrospective PDF document swap on a Telegram channel, and said that scammers use this feature to fraudulently claim that they had advance access to question papers for other exams.
“NTA acknowledges that the access restriction issued by MeitY affects lakhs of citizens who use the Telegram platform for legitimate personal, educational, professional and informational purposes, and sincerely regrets the inconvenience caused to them,” the agency said in its statement.
Published – June 16, 2026 11:37 am IST
