New Delhi, June 17: Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, has announced that a temporary ban imposed on the messaging platform has impacted over 150 million users in India ahead of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2026 re-examination.
In a post on social media platform X, Durov stated that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India had enacted a week-long ban on Telegram due to reports of users allegedly sharing leaked exam questions. This action has affected more than 150 million Telegram users in the country.
He further mentioned that Telegram has removed hundreds of channels in recent weeks that were reportedly sharing exam-related leaked content and running associated scams in India.
Durov also indicated that the company is working to make the ‘edited’ label on messages more visible to prevent fraud and manipulation of content by altering timestamps.
His comments come as the Indian government has ordered a temporary ban on Telegram services until June 22 to prevent any disruptions during the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21.
This re-examination is being conducted following allegations of a question paper leak during the original exam held on May 3.
The ban was implemented based on recommendations from the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the NEET exam for admission to medical undergraduate courses across the country.
In addition to the temporary ban, authorities have instructed Telegram to disable its message editing feature in India until June 30.
According to the NTA, investigation agencies believe this feature was previously misused. After the exam question paper was circulated, messages were edited to create misleading evidence of the leak.
In compliance with government directives, both Google and Apple have already removed Telegram from their respective app stores.
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