Explained: Telegram banned in India ahead of NEET test, but why not WhatsApp?

The government has restricted Telegram in the country ahead of the NEET re-test on June 21. That brings up the question – why has WhatsApp not been impacted? After all, both are popular messaging apps and quite similar in their functionality. Well, there are reasons.

In Short

• India bans Telegram ahead of NEET re-test on June 21
• NTA says fraudsters were selling fake NEET papers on Telegram
• While Telegram is banned, WhatsApp is not

The government, on Tuesday, banned Telegram on the recommendation of the National Testing Agency (NTA). The NTA cited that ahead of the NEET re-test scheduled for June 21, fraudsters were using Telegram to sell fake papers and spread misinformation. The move seems logical. But it does bring up a question: If Telegram is banned, why is India also not banning WhatsApp?

Both are messaging apps, both are popular and both serve similar functionalities. Yet, Telegram gets the ban hammer while WhatsApp is left untouched.

To understand why WhatsApp has not faced any restrictions, we first need to know what is said to be happening on Telegram. As per the NTA, Telegram channels such as "PAPER LEAKED NEET,” “Re-NEET 2026,” and "Private Mafia" were openly advertising access to exam papers and demanding lakhs of rupees from candidates in exchange.

Despite trying different methods, including large-scale takedown of channels, groups, the problem, as per the NTA, remained. As such, the agency recommended the restriction of the app. If the problem lies with groups and channels on Telegram, you may wonder whether the people running those groups can quickly move to WhatsApp and create similar groups on that platform. But things are not as simple.

Why Telegram is allegedly being used for frauds

Telegram is not the safest messaging platform out there. While platforms like WhatsApp have end-to-end encryption by default, Telegram doesn’t encrypt messages unless you select the option manually (except for Secret Chats).

Yet, when it comes to alleged fraud groups, including fake exam papers, Telegram seems to be the go-to-app. And the reason behind this could be the way Telegram is designed.

You see, Telegram focusses more on anonymity than its peers. When you create your profile, you can hide your phone number from other users, and use the app just by your username. While WhatsApp is testing a similar feature, it is yet to roll it out to all users.

And once you have created a profile on Telegram, it is quite easy for you to create a channel that can have unlimited subscribers, while keeping your identity anonymous. That is to say, that a group of people can hide their identity and run a channel with millions of subscribers. This likely makes it more difficult to track who is behind the scam compared to a platform like WhatsApp.

To give you some context, as per a research study presented at USENIX Security Symposium last year, 339 cybercriminal activity channels on Telegram were collectively followed by over 23.8 million users.

Though when it comes to privacy, Signal is believed to be one of the most secure apps out there. So why is it that these users are not on Signal? Telegram simply allows you to do a lot more when it comes to file sharing. You can share files as large as 2GBs on this platform with no compression. This is the reason why you may hear about movies or TV shows being leaked on Telegram.

And this same feature could allow someone to share exam papers on the app and claim that these are the leaked papers for the NEET re-test.

There is also the edit feature that allows you to edit older messages while retaining the original timestamp. According to the NTA, admins were using this feature to edit older messages, and sometimes even replacing the messages with PDF files to allegedly create fake proof of paper leaks.

This Telegram editing feature has also been disabled in India till June 30. While WhatsApp also allows you to edit messages, it is only for a limited period, and does not allow for adding any files.

WhatsApp untouched because it is better at policing

And then there’s the concept of Telegram itself. Telegram was created by Pavel Durov who wanted to build a platform that doesn’t cooperate with governments, unlike big tech giants. This has since allowed for those who may allegedly indulge in shady activities to pick the platform over others.

That is, while platforms like WhatsApp and X are quick to act on government directives even in India, Telegram does not have an office in India, which makes things trickier when it comes to enforcing directives.

At the same time, Telegram lacks, either deliberately or because of its capabilities, ability to actively police its groups and user behaviour. On WhatsApp, Meta uses a lot of AI-tools to automatically monitor the usage patterns. While Meta says that it can’t see what users are privately sharing or talking about, using AI it does monitor patterns and user behaviour in public groups. This policing is another reason why cyber criminals and frauds tend to prefer Telegram.

Although, of late, Telegram has also started cracking down on some of the objectionable user behaviour. In 2025, the platform blocked more than 43.5 million channels and groups were blocked, as per Check Point. In 2026, Telegram has increased moderation activity this year, with daily takedowns rising from roughly 10,000 to 30,000 to a sustained 80,000 to 140,000.

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