Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has criticised the Indian government’s temporary restriction on the messaging platform ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination, arguing that the move penalised millions of legitimate users without addressing the root cause of exam paper leaks.
Expressing his opinion on X, Durov said that the week-long ban had affected more than 150 million Telegram users in India while failing to deter those responsible for circulating leaked examination material.
“The ban hasn’t stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps,” he wrote, maintaining that blanket restrictions target ordinary users rather than the individuals behind organised cheating networks.
India’s IT ministry banned Telegram for one week because some users shared leaked exam questions.
This punishes 150M+ ordinary Telegram users in India — not the insiders who leaked the exam materials.
And the ban hasn’t stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps. https://t.co/CzQWN4mXfb
— Pavel Durov (@durov) June 16, 2026
Durov also defended Telegram’s efforts to tackle misuse on the platform, noting that the company had removed hundreds of channels linked to leaked exam material and scams in recent weeks. He added that Telegram had introduced measures to make edited messages more transparent to prevent backdating-related fraud. According to Durov, temporarily blocking the platform was a disproportionate response that disrupted access for millions while doing little to curb illicit activity.
The Centre had restricted access to Telegram until June 22 following recommendations from the National Testing Agency (NTA), which alleged that the platform had been used by rackets involved in the NEET-UG paper leak controversy. The move was aimed at safeguarding the integrity of the re-test scheduled for June 21, 2026, after the original examination was mired in allegations of malpractice.
At the time of filing this story, the Telegram app was unavailable on both Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
