The decision was announced on Tuesday by India’s National Testing Agency (NTA) as part of efforts to prevent the sale of fake examination papers and the spread of misinformation ahead of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) for medical studies, scheduled for June 21, 2026.
The suspension will be enforced nationwide and remain in effect until one day after the examination.
The NTA has also requested that Telegram disable its message-editing feature until June 30, arguing that the feature has been used after exams to fabricate evidence suggesting that leaked questions were known in advance when, in fact, they were not.
The move was taken under Section 69A of India’s Information Technology Act.
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov criticized the decision on X, arguing that suspending the platform for a week punishes millions of Indian users rather than those responsible for exam leaks.
“They have simply moved to other platforms,” he said, referring to those involved in leaking examination materials.
Durov added that Telegram had recently removed hundreds of channels linked to such activities and improved its system for showing when messages have been edited in an effort to combat fraud.
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh stated that preventing these groups from reaching their “customers” — students — would help curb the malpractice, even if perpetrators attempted to use VPN services from outside the country.
The NEET-UG examination is being conducted again after allegations emerged last month that the original test may have been leaked and sold to students. As a result, the previous results were invalidated, a retest was ordered, and a nationwide investigation was launched.
India is Telegram’s largest market worldwide, with approximately 354 million monthly users and more than 600 million downloads since the platform’s launch.
By the time the report was published, Google had already removed Telegram from the Play Store in India. However, some users were still able to access the application and certain features, including the ability to edit previously sent messages.
