Telegram failed to curb fraud, fuelled public unrest: What government’s blocking order says

The government has also cited apprehension that fraudulent activities on the platform “might pose serious challenges to the public order in the country”.

The blocking order was issued on June 16 by the government, exercising powers under IT Act Section 69A, and following a request by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), flagging “the growing misuse of the intermediary Telegram in the circulation of fake examination papers, dissemination of misleading information, and other fraudulent illegal activities relating to NEET (UG) 2026.”

A ‘fraudulent ecosystem’

According to the order, the agencies highlighted to MeitY that “despite repeated takedown actions against specific channels, the fraudulent ecosystem continues to proliferate on the Telegram platform through the creation of new channels, groups, and associated infrastructure. In view of the serious implications for the integrity of the examination process and in the interests of a large number of students appearing in the examination, the… MHA requested that access to… Telegram be blocked for at least till 22nd June by which time the examination process would have concluded.”

The order notes that on June 3, a meeting was held with Telegram, along with officials of NTA and MeitY, wherein “serious concerns regarding the misuse of the Telegram platform for dissemination of examination-related misinformation, circulation and selling of purported examination papers, and other fraudulent activities” were brought to the app’s notice.

“Despite such engagement and repeated reporting of objectionable channels, as per the nodal officer, the misuse has not abated and has even intensified before re-conduct of NEET Examination. As per agencies, the same Telegram operators continue to circulate false claims of an impending paper release, using rotated handles, pre-positioned backups, and burner accounts that have rendered channel-by-channel takedown ineffective. Students continue to be defrauded, and the persistent rumour-mongering is calculated to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the re-conducted examination at its most sensitive juncture,” the blocking order notes.

As per the blocking order, the agencies further submitted that the “reactive, entity-by-entity approach has been exhausted and that nothing short of a platform-level measure will secure the examination through the critical window and, accordingly, the agencies requested for the blocking of Telegram and its associated URLs under the emergency provisions of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.”

‘No preventive measures taken’

The blocking order signed by S Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, cited that “there has already been an incident where some miscreants exploited Telegram platform to spread fake information and to carry out fraudulent activities”.

MeitY also highlighted that Telegram has “failed to effectively curb such activities or take any effective preventive measures on their platform which resulted in widespread public unrest in the country”, even after discussions with Telegram officials.

“A repeat of such lack of pre-emption on the platform and continuous propagation of similar contents/activities will again create public order situations in the country besides undermining the credibility of the public institutions like NTA,” MeitY reasoned in its order.

Adding that the NTA in a technical note has specifically highlighted “how the message editing feature, with timestamp retention, was exploited by the fraudulent actors to create leaked chat artifacts and mislead the NEET aspirants”, the blocking order notes that “a repetition of the same will again create panic among students and parents…”

“To prevent any such adverse effects by spreading false and misleading information in relation to the re-conduct of the NEET UG 2026 examination, the Designated Officer, after careful examination of the request, along with the accompanying information and to his satisfaction, under Rule 9(1) of the Rules, has made specific recommendation to block access… to any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource by messaging platform intermediary Telegram and its associated URLs till 22 June…,” the order states.

It also directed the messaging platform to “disable the message editing feature till 30th June 2026, as there is a cogent apprehension that the referred to fraudulent illegal activities on the platform might pose serious challenges to the public order in the country”.