NEET retest 2026: Govt bans Telegram app until June 22. Here's why

The Centre on Tuesday temporarily banned the Telegram app over alleged paper leak channels until midnight on June 22. The NEET re-exam is scheduled to take place on June 21 after a paper leak in May impacted over 23 lakh students. 

According to the National Testing Agency (NTA), the ban comes after months of monitoring the Telegram channels allegedly used by organising cheating and cyber fraud rackets.

Channels such as "PAPER LEAKED NEET", "Re-NEET 2026", "Private Mafia" and "REE NEET MAFIAA" openly shared access to the exam paper and also demanded payments from a few thousand to several lakh rupees from candidates and their families. 

The app has been ordered to disable its message editing feature for all previously posted messages in India till June 30, 2026. 

According to the NTA, the feature has been used to "fabricate after-the-event 'paper leak' artefacts: a channel administrator edits an older, innocuous message to insert the actual question paper after the examination has been conducted, and the resulting chat is then circulated as purported 'evidence' that the paper was in circulation before the examination." 

"The MeitY direction closes this avenue of fabrication for the post-examination window in which such artefacts have historically been deployed."

Describing the measures as "calibrated and bounded in time", the NTA said that the steps were taken only after other remedies, including a takedown of channels and groups, failed to address the problem. Banning Telegram temporarily was a "measure of last resort" designed to protect public order and ensure the integrity of the upcoming NEET-UG retest.  

Furthermore, the agency reiterated that no such paper exists outside the secured exam chain. 

"NTA has placed on the record, and reiterates, that there is no such paper available outside the secured examination chain. The promise of any such material is, in every instance, a fraud," the agency said.

The NTA said that this temporary ban on Telegram would go a long way in ensuring a 'safe and secure' environment for hundreds of thousands of students appearing for the medical entrance exam on Sunday. 

Meanwhile, Google and Apple confirmed receiving the Government of India's order to delist Telegram from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, respectively. Sources within Apple told Reuters that the Cupertino-based tech giant will comply with the order amid concerns of NEET paper leak.