The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Tuesday said the Centre has restricted access to messaging platform Telegram in India till June 22 and directed it to disable its message-editing feature till June 30, citing concerns over examination-related fraud ahead of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (Neet-UG) 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21.
According to the NTA, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued the directions following recommendations from the agency and the Department of Higher Education. The temporary restriction covers the day of the examination and its immediate aftermath, while the editing curbs are aimed at preventing the fabrication of false “paper leak” evidence.
“NTA welcomes the directions issued today in respect of the Telegram platform in India. The directions, issued on recommendations of NTA, are calibrated and bounded in time,” the agency said in a statement.
The agency said the action was taken in response to the alleged organised use of Telegram by cheating rackets targeting candidates appearing for the re-examination. It added that the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, had been coordinating efforts with NTA, state police forces and MeitY to remove Telegram channels, groups and bots that were allegedly advertising fraudulent access to examination papers.
The agency said the platform-level restrictions were introduced after channel-by-channel takedown efforts were found insufficient to address the scale of the problem. NTA described the measures as a “last resort” and said they were calibrated to impose the minimum restrictions necessary to protect candidates and maintain public order.
“The directions are a measure of last resort, taken only after intermediate remedies, including the take-down action coordinated by I4C, had been pursued and had not produced, at the platform level, the response required to protect candidates in the run-up to the examination,” the agency added.
The agency alleged that several Telegram channels openly operating under names such as “PAPER LEAKED Neet”, “Re-Neet 2026” and similar variants had demanded money from candidates and their families, claiming to provide access to the examination paper. NTA reiterated that no examination paper was available outside the secured examination process and termed all such claims fraudulent.
It also said that Telegram’s message-editing feature had been misused in recent examinations. According to NTA, administrators could edit older messages and replace attached files while retaining the original timestamp, creating the appearance that examination papers had been shared before a test. The direction to disable editing seeks to prevent such post-examination manipulation, it said.
“This capability has been used, in respect of multiple recent examinations, to fabricate after-the-event ‘paper leak’ artefacts: a channel administrator edits an older, innocuous message to insert the actual question paper after the examination has been conducted, and the resulting chat is then circulated as purported ‘evidence’ that the paper was in circulation before the examination. The MeitY direction closes this avenue of fabrication for the post-examination window in which such artefacts have historically been deployed,” NTA said.
The agency cited enforcement action by state authorities, including advisories issued by Bihar Police and arrests made by the Ahmedabad City Cyber Crime Branch in connection with alleged examination-related fraud conducted through Telegram channels.
NTA said the Neet-UG 2026 re-examination would proceed as scheduled on June 21 and urged candidates to rely only on official channels for updates.
