Nationwide College students Union of India (NSUI) employees maintain placards that includes India’s Training Minister Dharmendra Pradhan throughout a protest towards the Nationwide Testing Company (NTA) over alleged examination paper leaks and the next rescheduling of the Nationwide Eligibility-cum-Entrance Take a look at (NEET) in Hyderabad, Telangana, on June 13, 2026.
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Indian authorities have restricted entry to the messaging app Telegram in an effort to stop examination fraud, after the cancellation of a vital check final month sparked protests throughout the nation.
Telegram will probably be unavailable till June 22, whereas its message enhancing function can even be disabled till June 30, India’s Nationwide Testing Company mentioned in a press release shared on X on Tuesday.
The transfer is in response to the “organized use of the [Telegram] platform by dishonest rackets to defraud candidates,” who will probably be taking a nationwide entrance check on June 21, the NTA mentioned.
The Nationwide Eligibility cum Entrance Take a look at (undergraduate) or NEET-UG is an important examination for admission to medical faculties and was cancelled in Might as a result of allegations of a paper leak, affecting thousands and thousands of scholars.
Telegram is owned by Russian-born tech billionaire Pavel Durov, and it claims to have greater than 1 billion month-to-month lively customers globally. CNBC has reached out to Telegram for remark.
Over the previous few weeks, authorities investigations discovered a number of channels on Telegram claiming to have entry to leaked examination papers and soliciting funds “starting from just a few thousand to a number of lakhs of rupees from candidates and their households.”
The NTA has mentioned that no such examination paper is “obtainable outdoors the secured examination chain,” and claiming entry to it quantities to fraud.
Final month, Rahul Gandhi, India’s chief of the opposition, demanded the resignation of the nation’s training minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, following the NEET “paper leak” that affected 2.2 million college students. The NEET-UG examination was first held on Might 3 however was cancelled on Might 12, following complaints of irregularities within the course of.
A social media-first, mock political social gathering referred to as the Cockroach Janta Celebration has additionally organized protests throughout India demanding accountability for the paper leak concern.
The discrepancies in exams have been “pretty disastrous,” Ashok Malik, associate at public coverage assume tank The Asia Group advised CNBC earlier this month. “It’s maybe the most important problem the federal government has confronted in 12 years,” he mentioned.
