Telegram banned to stop NEET leaks, but will it? 5 questions that need answers

India's Telegram ban has triggered a wave of discussions online – as these things always do – regarding censorship and if at all, steps like these, can curb paper leaks.

In Short

• India bans Telegram ahead of NEET re-test on June 21
• NTA says channels on Telegram were selling fake papers, spreading misinformation
• Blocking Telegram is trickier than other apps

Telegram just got banned in India. Ahead of the NEET (UG) re-examination, which is scheduled for June 21, 2026, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has imposed a nation-wide ban on Telegram over the recommendation of the National Testing Agency (NTA). The ban is intended to crack down on any – and every – scope of exam paper leak, rumoured or otherwise. The former, which is rumour and misinformation, appears to be of greater concern since the NTA categorically says that “no such paper (is) available outside the secured examination chain” and the “the security of the (NEET) examination is unaffected by the action taken.”

However, unlike the existing blanket ban on Chinese apps like TikTok and PUBG, Telegram isn’t going away for good. For now, the ban shall remain effective until June 22, which is a day after the NEET (UG) re-examination, per official communication from the NTA. There is one very specific feature of the app – message editing – which has separately been flagged and would remain unavailable for use until June 30.

The mandate has triggered a wave of discussions online – as these things always do – regarding censorship and if at all, steps like these, can curb paper leaks. Some are questioning if it is even possible to ban Telegram given the nature of its underlying technology. The answer to each of these questions, as it turns out, isn’t a clear yes or no. Rather, it is a maybe. We’ll have to wait and see how things pan out.

Q1: Why has India banned Telegram until June 22?

The NTA has called the action a “last resort” after extensive Telegram channel takedowns failed to eliminate instances of malice and fraud around the paper on the platform. Upon close watch, the NTA claims it found bad actors operating under brazen titles like “PAPER LEAKED NEET” and “Private Mafia,” demanding thousands to lakhs of rupees from vulnerable people in exchange of supposed NEET question papers.

The message editing feature of Telegram is of particular interest – and concerns – given how it allows administrators to easily edit old posts and replace attached PDFs keeping the original timestamp unchanged. Per NTA claims, miscreants would post a generic message before the exam, edit it after the exam to include the real question paper, and then distribute screenshots as proof of an early leak to spark panic.

Q2: Is it really possible to completely ban Telegram?

This is where things get tricky. From a legal standpoint, Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 allows the government to block specific information as and when there is potential threat to the security and sovereignty of India. The actual text of MeitY’s blocking orders has not been made public but regardless, a total platform ban is a massive undertaking, even more so in the case of Telegram which is literally made from the ground-up to evade censorship.

Normally, when the government bans something, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Jio or Airtel use Domain Name System (DNS) filtering to bar access. You can think of DNS as a phonebook for the internet. In the event an ISP is directed to block an app or website, it would refuse to connect to their specific server(s) and instead tell you, the app or website doesn’t exist. It is basically a lie since the same app or website will become accessible the moment you step outside the blocking area or use a VPN.

But Telegram isn’t your average app. It sends encrypted requests to giant cloud networks like Cloudflare and Google, effectively hiding what you're looking for from your ISP. Even if ISPs use more advanced tools like Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to sniff out Telegram’s digital signature, or Server Name Indication (SNI) filtering to peek at your connection, Telegram can – at least in theory – bypass all that by disguising its traffic to look like normal web browsing using its custom encryption technology called the MTProto mobile protocol. Finally, Telegram is known to bounce traffic through decentralised proxy servers, making it incredibly hard to pin the app down and block it by standard measures.

The complexity of the situation is best described by 19-year-old viral cybersecurity researcher Nisarga Adhikary, who says, “Blocking Telegram totally isn't even possible, Telegram is designed in such a way which easily allows people to use proxies and other methods of circumvention.”

Q3: Can the paper leakers move to other apps like Signal and WhatsApp?

They absolutely can, and honestly, some probably will, a sentiment that Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov also agrees with in a sense. Soon after India’s ban on Telegram went into effect, Durov took to X and wrote: “This punishes 150M+ ordinary Telegram users in India – not the insiders who leaked the exam materials. And the ban hasn't stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps.”

Be that as it may, the reason Telegram is under the scanner – specifically – is because its feature set makes it an attractive destination to disseminate information at scale – features that WhatsApp and Signal simply don't offer yet.

For starters, Telegram allows public groups of up to 2,00,000 users and has massive file-hosting capabilities, whereas WhatsApp groups are much more restrictive. More importantly, Telegram features public search discovery, meaning a student can just type “NEET leak” into a search bar and immediately find a fraudulent channel. WhatsApp and Signal require phone numbers or direct invite links to join groups, making them much harder for random scammers to market heavily to the public.

Jasveer Singh (@jasveer10), Co-founder and CEO of Knot Dating, suggests Telegram is a haven for financial fraud, scam networks, betting groups, piracy, and other illegal activities. "Nobody is using Telegram in India for messaging. Telegram is mostly used by scammers in India. Most financial fraud (Billions of dollars) in India happens through Telegram. The Indian government should have banned Telegram years ago. It is long overdue. I’ve been noticing the same pattern for years," he wrote on X, adding, "Almost every fraudster immediately moves to Telegram. It’s harder to trace, easier to operate"

Q4: What happens to the Telegram ban after June 22?

The good news for casual users is that this isn't a permanent ban like the ban on TikTok. The NTA has been very clear that this is a “calibrated and time-bounded” emergency measure.

Because the strict restrictions are tied directly to the June 21 re-examination, the platform-wide access block is scheduled to lift immediately after the exam window shuts on June 22, 2026. Normal internet routing will resume, and you'll be able to text your friends and access your study groups again. However, as a safety buffer, the message-editing restriction will stay active until June 30. This acts as a cooling-off period, ensuring scammers can't fake post-exam narratives while the NTA processes answer keys and initial results.

Q5: Will this set a precedent for future platform bans?

This is the question that has digital rights advocates deeply worried. Historically, when Indian state governments wanted to prevent cheating during major recruitment exams, they would deploy localised mobile internet shutdowns turning off the internet for an entire region for a few hours.

Moving away from local infrastructure blackouts to a nationwide, platform-specific ban is different and far more concerning. While the controversial history of the NEET re-test might justify extreme security responses, groups like the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) are sounding the alarm. They've called the move a reactive “band-aid solution” that won't actually stop exam fraud. Furthermore, the IFF warns if standard product features like text editing can be legally forced offline by a state mandate during an exam, it opens the gateway for routine, administrative censorship of the platforms we use every day.

Not to mention, the inconvenience it is bound to bring to those who've been using Telegram for the good reasons, as evidenced by this X post from Apurva Jain (@apurvajain24): "My brother’s NEET PG notes, videos and paid study groups were all on Telegram. Telegram got banned. So now he’s stuck messaging pirated-content scammers just to access what he already paid for. To stop one leaked NEET UG paper, you broke access for thousands of honest aspirants. The source of the leak walks free. The medium gets banned. The students get punished."

According to Durov: “Over the past few weeks, we removed hundreds of channels sharing leaked exam materials and related scams in India. We’re also making the “edited” label more visible to prevent backdating scams. Telegram is a force for good. Banning it — even temporarily — is a mistake.”

- Ends