India has temporarily blocked the Telegram app over concerns it may be used for cheating, days before a crucial medical entrance exam is set to be reheld.
The report indicates that india has temporarily blocked the Telegram app over concerns it may be used for cheating, days before a crucial medical entrance exam is set to be reheld.
It further notes that millions of students will retake the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test – Undergraduate (NEET-UG) on June 12, after the exam held in May was cancelled over allegations of a paper leak.
The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the exam, welcomed the move, saying that it was taken in response to the “organised use of the platform [Telegram] by cheating rackets to defraud candidates”.
But internet users and rights activists have criticised the ban, calling it a “band-aid solution” to tackle a much larger problem of exam fraud.
Telegram has not issued a statement yet. The BBC has contacted the platform for a response.
The platform was still available to users in India hours after the government’s announcement, and it is not clear yet how the curb will be enforced.
But it has brought the NEET-UG exam – the gateway to joining medical colleges in India – and the recent controversy surrounding it back into the headlines.
Nearly 2.28 million candidates took the exam on May 3, at more than 5,000 centres across India. But within days, the NTA scrapped the exam after allegations of a paper leak led to widespread protests.
The case is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation and more than a dozen arrests have been made so far.
The NEET cancellation and a separate controversy related to marking issues in a crucial school-leaving exam led to protests across India demanding the federal education minister’s resignation.
In 2024 too, the NEET exam was rocked by allegations of paper leaks, fraud and irregularities in the awarding of grace marks after thousands of candidates received unusually high scores.
On Tuesday, NTA stated that India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had directed Telegram to restrict access to the app in India until June 22, the day after the retest.
It added that the ministry had also asked the app to disable the message-editing feature until June 30, in India, saying that it had been used to “fabricate” evidence of paper leaks. The contentious exam deciding the fate of India’s doctors. Protests in India after medical entrance test scrapped over leak claims
The testing agency also stated that the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) – which fights cybercrime – had taken down a “substantial number of Telegram channels, groups and bots whose names and content openly advertised their fraudulent and misleading purpose”, acting on information shared by NTA and other law enforcement agencies.
