On June 16, 2026, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued two directions under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The first blocked all access to Telegram in India until midnight on June 22, the day after the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination. The second required Telegram to disable its message-editing feature for all previously posted content in India until June 30. Both directions were issued on the formal recommendation of the National Testing Agency.

The directions arrive forty-five days after one of the most serious examination integrity failures in Indian history: the cancellation on May 12 of a paper sat by over 2.27 million aspirants, after the CBI confirmed the question paper had been leaked from within the NTA's sown question-setting chain. During investigations, the CBI identified involvement from individuals within the NTA's question paper-setting process and individuals with NTA affiliations operating coaching sessions in Pune. According to investigative findings, the leaked papers were handwritten, scanned, converted into PDF files and then circulated among students at coaching centres across multiple states. Investigators found that examination materials reached coaching institutes in Latur on April 23, approximately ten days before the examination date. The investigation uncovered what officials described as a multi-state network involving students, coaching-linked persons and middlemen, with the alleged leak spreading across Rajasthan, Haryana, Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and other states. The CBI has since found evidence the same network compromised the NEET-UG 2025 paper as well. The government's response to this insider breach has been to block a messaging application.

What the Two Orders Actually Do

The NTA's case runs along two distinct tracks. The first is fraud prevention. Channels named “PAPER LEAKED NEET,” “Re-NEET 2026,” and “Private Mafia” were demanding sums from a few thousand to several lakhs of rupees from candidates for supposed access to the re-examination paper. The Ahmedabad City Cyber Crime Branch arrested an inter-state gang running eight such channels with documented transactions of approximately Rs 1.5 crore and over 1,000 mobile numbers targeted in a single month. The NTA states, correctly, that no such paper exists outside the secured examination chain. These are confidence tricks, not genuine leak operations.

The second track is evidence fabrication. Telegram allows a channel administrator to edit a previously posted message, including replacing attached files, while retaining the original send-time stamp. Fraudsters post an innocuous message before the exam, then edit it after the exam to insert the question paper, and circulate the screenshot as supposed pre-exam evidence. The order disabling the editing feature for previously posted messages closes this specific mechanism without blocking the platform. It is targeted, temporally bounded, and directly connected to an identified harm. The full access ban is the blunter of the two orders and the harder one to defend.

The Section 69A Analysis

Section 69A empowers the Central Government to block content on grounds including public order. The Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) upheld the provision as constitutionally valid, provided its procedural safeguards are met: a written order, committee approval including the Secretary of the Ministry of Law and Justice, and an opportunity for the intermediary to be heard.

The proportionality framework from K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), applied to internet restrictions in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), demands more. The Supreme Court in Anuradha Bhasin held that any restriction on internet access must satisfy four requirements: legitimate aim, rational connection to that aim, necessity in the sense of being the least restrictive means available, and proportionality between the measure's effects and its object. The Court specifically pointed to targeting specific accounts or channels rather than a broader shutdown as the kind of less restrictive alternative the government must genuinely consider before escalating.

The NTA describes the ban as a “measure of last resort,” invoked only after channel-level takedowns by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre “failed to produce adequate compliance at the platform level.” That claim addresses the necessity requirement directly. But the claim is difficult to verify, and the proportionality burden is real. Telegram serves tens of millions of users in India for entirely legitimate purposes. The NTA acknowledged this and expressed regret. Whether targeted channel-blocking, criminal prosecution of identified operators already underway in Ahmedabad, and formal engagement with Telegram's own compliance processes were genuinely exhausted is a question the government's statement does not fully answer.

There is also the enforcement problem. As of the time of writing, multiple users reported Telegram remained accessible hours after the ban was announced. A platform with no India office and no local infrastructure cannot be compelled the way a domestic service provider can. If the ban is not actually enforced, it punishes legitimate users with uncertainty while doing nothing to fraud operators who will simply use VPNs.

The Structural Problem No Ban Can Reach

The Telegram ban does not address the condition that made the 2026 leak possible. That condition is an insider threat inside the NTA's own processes.

The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, was enacted to address cheating and malpractices in public examinations, including paper leaks, organized cheating gangs, and impersonation. The Act specifies unfair means to include unauthorized access or leakage of question papers, assisting candidates during examinations, tampering with computer networks, and conducting fake examinations for monetary gain. General offences carry imprisonment of three to five years with fines up to Rs 10 lakh, while organized crimes attract five to ten years imprisonment and fines of at least one crore rupees. The Act mandates technological safeguards such as CCTV surveillance, biometric verification, and electronic jammers during examinations. However, the Act primarily focuses on punishment and surveillance but lacks emphasis on preventive measures such as ethics education, awareness campaigns, and mental health support for students. Experts argue the Act should be part of a comprehensive plan that includes technology developments, greater monitoring, and effective administrative procedures rather than relying solely on deterrence.

The government's security measures for the June 21 re-examination illustrate the gap. Indian Air Force aircraft are transporting question papers. Biometric checks, AI surveillance, GPS tracking, and signal jammers have been deployed. These measures are welcome. They are also an implicit admission that the security framework on May 3 was inadequate to a known threat environment. The 2024 controversy had already identified Latur as a geography of risk and insider threats as a systemic vulnerability. None of this was new when the May 3 examination was designed.

On May 25, the Supreme Court sought a status report on implementation of the recommendations made by the committee constituted after its 2024 ruling. That question sits at the centre of the most consequential pending litigation. Medical organisations have petitioned for dissolution of the NTA and a court-monitored examination system. The NTA has no statutory basis, no independent governing board, and no Parliamentary accountability. Whether a body structured this way can credibly administer the largest examination in the world is the question courts must eventually answer.

The Telegram ban is legally supported by Section 69A and the Shreya Singhal framework. The editing-feature order is a precise and proportionate instrument. The fraud operations on the platform were real. But legality is not adequacy.

The leak reached Telegram because it escaped the NTA's own chain first. It escaped because a question-setter was simultaneously embedded in a coaching network. It escaped because the same vulnerability produced the same result the year before. Banning the platform for six days addresses the last step in a sequence of failures without confronting any of the earlier ones.

India is not blaming the messenger. It is banning the messenger, using Air Force aircraft to carry the papers, and calling that security.

Author is a fourth year BA.LL.B. student at Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur. Views are personal.