The messaging service will not be accessible until June 22 following an alleged examination paper leak.
India has placed a temporary ban on Telegram due to concerns about cheating during exams. The government recently annulled the results of a crucial medical entrance exam, asserting that answers were leaked via Telegram, according to reports. To maintain the integrity of the upcoming re-test on June 21, the app will be entirely blocked until June 22.
This may seem an extreme decision for a platform with an estimated 84 million users in India, but the situation is more complex. The leak is compounded by issues surrounding the examination process, which has been condemned as “flawed and corrupt” by prominent opposition figures. This has led to significant student unrest and protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The controversial situation, known as the CBSE scandal linked to India’s Central Board of Secondary Education, involves 2.28 million students who took the NEET medical entrance exam on May 3. This year, a new On-Screen Marking system was implemented, which faced criticism regarding its execution. Many students reported significant inconsistencies in their results.
One student who received a scanned copy of his answer sheet found it did not belong to him. “I studied for an entire year, and now I can’t even confirm if MY actual Physics paper was graded,” he expressed on a social media platform. Following these complaints, another student revealed security issues within the grading portal and claimed to have accessed the system to modify scores.
On May 12, the National Testing Agency (NTA) canceled the results, citing evidence of wide-scale leaks of the exam paper, which had allegedly circulated on Telegram prior to the test. The NTA indicated that Telegram channels with names like “Paper Leaked NEET” were offering access to the exam content for a fee.
However, the Internet Freedom Foundation criticized the ban as an ineffective “band-aid solution” to the problem of exam fraud. In a recent statement, they remarked that the Telegram block is a disproportionate response that harms regular users while failing to tackle the underlying causes of exam leaks.
