NEW DELHI: The imposition of temporary restrictions on Telegram ahead of the re-NEET exam on Sunday has sparked a debate on social media, with critics questioning the effectiveness of the move and others favouring it to curb the spread of misinformation and fake claims of paper leak that can create confusion among students.
Reacting to the National Testing Agency’s post on X, Nisarga Adhikary, a self-described ethical hacker who exposed the alleged security gaps in CBSE’s on-screen marking system (OSM), claimed that people can easily circumvent any blocking of Telegram.
“Can’t stop paper leaks, ends up blocking Telegram. Blocking Telegram totally isn’t even possible; Telegram is designed in such a way which easily allows people to use proxies and other methods of circumvention,” he said on X.
Adhikary, who recently cleared his Class 12 examinations, has now joined the C3iHub at IIT-K’s cybersecurity and cyber defence innovation centre as an OSINT and threat intelligence engineer on a contractual basis.
Responding to criticism of the move, IIT Kanpur Director Manindra Agrawal said the concern was not merely the sharing of leaked papers but the circulation of fake leak claims that could appear genuine and create confusion among candidates.
“Will need to sit him down and explain. The problem with Telegram channel is not sharing of leaked paper, there are many other ways of doing it, rather that it can be used to spread fake news of leak that appears genuine. It was done by someone during JEE Advanced. It causes unnecessary confusion,” Agrawal wrote on X.
Sarthak Siddhant, an 18-year-old student who came into the limelight during the OSM row, also questioned the rationale behind the restrictions.
Siddhant was among the students aggrieved by the CBSE’s OSM system and had pointed out alleged irregularities in the tendering process to select a vendor for the OSM exercise in Class-12 board exams.
In a post on X, he wrote, “Just because a COMMUNICATION MEDIUM has elements of misinformation, we have decided to shut it down.”
He further asked, “Doesn’t WhatsApp have elements of misinformation? Doesn’t the Indian press? What’s the reasoning behind shutting down entire Telegram?”
Referring to Agrawal’s remarks, Sidhant wondered if “Twitter should be shut down because misinformation is being spread there”.
“In fact, let’s shut down every medium of dissent because dissent is misinformation after all? Let’s ban people talking to each other because misinformation. fake news. mute society. (sic)”
Responding to the criticism, Agrawal said, “If you change a post in WhatsApp, it shows when you edited it. So that is not a problem.”
After Sidhant questioned the “logic” behind the distinction, Agrawal claimed that Telegram allows “one to fake a leak without leaving a trace”.
“Telegram, as I write, has this special feature that allows editing of a post WITHOUT reflecting that edit has been done. This is dangerous. No other major social media channel has this. One can still argue that banning is not a good idea. But the context of ban needs to be set right.”
The government on Tuesday temporarily restricted access to the Telegram messaging app in India till June 22 ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination, with the National Testing Agency saying the measure was aimed at tackling cheating rackets and misinformation.
A separate direction requires Telegram to disable in India the message-editing feature for already-posted messages till June 30.
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh said the restrictions on Telegram were part of efforts to ensure that the test is conducted without malpractice.
“We will not let anything go wrong. We will take all possible actions to ensure that the examination is conducted without any malpractice,” Singh told PTI when asked about the move and its timing, with only a few days left before the examination.
Asked whether the action was prompted by any report of paper leak, Singh said there was no such trigger and that authorities had instead been dealing with fake messages circulating online.
“No, these were all fake messages. Yesterday also, Ahmedabad Police cracked a case in which fake messages were being circulated,” he said.
Singh said the circulation of such messages was causing anxiety among candidates. “Since this was going on, it was leading to a lot of people being anxious and a lot of mental stress to the students. We had to take this action,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) criticised the government’s curbs on Telegram, calling the move a band-aid solution and a “disproportionate” response to exam fraud.
“This is a blunt, nationwide measure aimed at the conduct of rampant fraud rackets, and on the Government’s own admission is constitutionally incompatible,” it said on X.
NEET-UG re-test: Telegram curbs ahead of re-NEET spark social media debate IIT-K director defends move
