Telegram’s Durov says India punishing 150 million users after country app ban
National Students Union of India (NSUI) workers hold placards featuring Indian Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan during a protest against the National Testing Agency (NTA) over allegations of leak of exam papers and subsequent rescheduling of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) on June 13, 2026 in Hyderabad, Telangana.
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Messaging platform Telegram has criticized the Indian government’s move to temporarily block access to the app to prevent exam fraud, stating that it penalizes 150 million ordinary users rather than those guilty of leaking test papers.
Indian officials on Tuesday restricted access to Telegram in an effort to prevent exam fraud after the cancellation of a crucial exam last month sparked nationwide protests.
Telegram will not be available until June 22, while the message editing feature will be disabled until June 30, India’s National Testing Agency said in a statement shared on X on Tuesday.
The move came in response to “organized use by society”. [Telegram] NTA said it is a fraudulent platform to defraud candidates who will appear for the national entrance exam on June 21.
The National Eligibility and Entrance Test (undergraduate) or NEET-UG is a crucial exam for admission to medical colleges and was canceled in May due to allegations of paper leaks affecting millions of students.
Telegram is owned by Russian-born technology billionaire Pavel Durov. more than 1 billion Number of monthly active users worldwide.
The government’s move “punishes 150 million ordinary Telegram users in India – not the insiders who leaked the exam material,” Durov said in a statement on his platform late Tuesday. He added that the ban “didn’t stop anything” and leaks merely migrated to other apps. CNBC could not independently verify these statistics.
Over the past few weeks, government investigations have revealed numerous channels on Telegram claiming to have access to leaked exam papers and demanding payments “ranging from several thousand to several lakhs of rupees from candidates and their families”.
NTA said such an exam paper “does not exist outside the secure exam chain” and that claiming access to this document amounts to fraud.
Last month, India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi asked for resignation On the orders of the country’s education minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the wake of the NEET “paper leak” affecting 2.2 million students. NEET-UG exam was first held on May 3 but canceled on May 12 following complaints about irregularities in the process.
A social media-first fake political party known as the Cockroach Janta Party has also staged protests across India. demand accountability for paper leak issue.
Ashok Malik, partner at public policy think tank The Asia Group, told CNBC earlier this month that the discrepancies in the exams were “pretty catastrophic.” “This is perhaps the biggest challenge the government has faced in 12 years,” he said.
