Banning Telegram will not fix the deeper flaws in India's exam governance

The government’s move to block the Telegram messaging app until June 22, a day after the re-examination for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (Neet-UG) 2026 for medical courses, is a case of misdirected vigilance. The crisis does not lie in the propagation of leaked papers through a messaging app but in a clear case of inefficiency in the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the exam. The controversy initially erupted when a teacher highlighted significant similarities between a guess, or mock, exam paper circulated on social media and the actual question paper. As a swift investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) revealed, this overlap was courtesy a Pune-based chemistry professor and paper setter who was on the NTA panel and had access to confidential examination material. He proceeded to hold special coaching sessions in which he dictated the questions and answers to select students mobilised by other NTA-empanelled subject-matter experts through contacts in coaching centres in Rajasthan. The basic problem, then, is a serious governance deficit within the NTA, not a technology issue. Telegram has moved the Delhi High Court against the government’s decision.   

By invoking Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, now to block Telegram, the government has marshalled heavy legal machinery. Grounds for blocking under the Section include, among other things, the sovereignty, integrity and defence of India and to prevent cognizable offences. The problem here is the circular reasoning. The offence, which has caused 2.27 million traumatised aspirants to re-sit the Neet-UG exam on June 21, was weak systemic due diligence within the NTA ecosystem. Telegram and other social-media channels were passive propagators of the scam, not the creators. The government has explained its decision to block Telegram as an attempt to curb fraud channels from claiming access to the question paper in advance for a fee. However, the NTA director general has since provided a detailed explanation of how these scams operate and why students should not fall for them. He has also urged them to report suspicious claims on the MyGov portal. 

If the director general has already warned students about these frauds and also claims the re-examination question papers are secure, the need to block social-media channels becomes redundant. Part of the government’s ire is because of the fact that Telegram hosts its servers outside India and declines to share its meta-data with Indian law-enforcement agencies; consequently, authorities say they have not been able to trace the origins of the scam. This, again, is irrational, since the CBI has already pinpointed the cause and arrested the perpetrators. Given that Telegram has 150 million users in India, the temporary blanket restriction will inconvenience users even as potential scammers can shift to other social-media platforms such as WhatsApp or Instagram. 

This is not the first time that allegations of leaks in Neet-UG question papers have surfaced. Similar breaches were reported in 2024, though investigation revealed that the leaks were tied to specific centres in Bihar and Gujarat. At the time, the Supreme Court ruled out systemic malpractice. But the modus operandi suggests that the practice could easily be scaled up, given the overlaps between coaching institutes and paper setters. This is the nexus the NTA urgently needs to address. Temporary social-media bans merely treat the symptoms, not the cause.