Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 18: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday chaired a high-level review meeting of senior officials and functionaries of the Ministry of Education, State Governments, National Testing Agency (NTA) and Higher Education Institutions to assess the preparedness of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test – Under Graduate (NEET-UG) re-examination to be held on June 21.
Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Sanjay Kumar; Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Vineet Joshi and Director General, NTA, Shri Abhishek Singh, also attended the meeting.
In a related development, two days after the Centre’s decision for a temporary ban on Telegram messaging platform in India until June 22, citing concerns linked to the conduct of the retest, the Delhi High Court on Thursday reserved its judgment on the plea challenging suspension order. The Centre had issued the order to deny access to the platform during the period when the NEET-UG re-test is to be held.
During the hearing on the Telegram’s petition challenging the Centre’s order, Centre informed the court it had been repeatedly asking Telegram messaging app to take proactive measures to keep a check on illegal and suspicious channels. Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta submitted the Court that “nothing was done” about the matter.
Addressing the high-level meeting, Mr Pradhan emphasised on the importance of maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency and efficiency in the examination process and directed all concerned authorities to remain vigilant and fully prepared. He urged the officials concerned to ensure that necessary measures were in place for the free and fair conduct of the re-examination.
Emphasising on the importance of coordination at all levels, the Minister informed that officers designated by the Ministry will reach all the States to coordinate the activities pertaining to the re-examination process and will report to the Command Centre headed by the DG, NTA. The Minister asked the designated nodal officers of the State governments to ensure that students were provided all necessary facilities to enable them to appear for the re-examination in a stress-free environment.
Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Sanjay Kumar, said the students must be put at absolute ease to appear for the re-test by giving them all necessary facilities including provision of seating arrangements before the exam and drinking water. He requested the nodal officers of the State governments to ensure that adequate steps were taken in this regard.
Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Vineet Joshi remarked that the time between now and the date of the re-examination was crucial and stressed on the need for proactive coordination, timely dissemination of instructions and strict compliance with all prescribed protocols.
Director General, NTA, Abhishek Singh said that NTA was working with all concerned stakeholders including the district level coordination committees headed by the DMs, State police departments and intelligence agencies to ensure that the re-examination was conducted smoothly.
Detailed deliberations were held on the examination preparedness, coordination mechanisms, security protocols, logistical arrangements, grievance redressal mechanisms and adherence to examination guidelines. States/UTs were advised to maintain close coordination with all stakeholders to ensure the smooth, transparent and seamless conduct of the re-examination.
222 participants attended the meeting that was conducted in a hybrid mode. Senior officials from various States/Union Territories, nodal officers of centrally funded institutes, vice chancellors and directors of higher educational institutes across the country participated in the meeting. They assured full cooperation and said they were committed to taking all necessary measures for the smooth conduct of the examination and ensuring a smooth and hassle-free experience for the candidates.
In the High Court, Telegram responding to the government’s allegations said, “We have suggested blocking device level.”
Mr Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said most channels on the platform are bots. “In Telegram, one account can create 40 bots. In WhatsApp it’s one bot per user,” he said, citing a Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) report. The report says that Telegram’s platform is not competent enough to deal with the something like current situation, unlike other similar messaging apps, the government submission noted.
He noted that the platform operates through the cloud infrastructure. “Those who commit crime cannot be tracked.” “Telegram has faced actions of terror activities by other countries. Other countries have also taken action on the platform due to its usage which is objectionable,” he said, adding that the government has submitted a list of action taken against Telegram by other countries.
“The entire population of a channel, around a lakh, can be moved to another channel in seconds. This is uniquely to Telegram and poses a serious risk,” Mr Mehta added. During the hearing, the Court questioned the government’s submission, asking whether rights of those using the app can be curtailed “because some people are misusing it.”
“Can you block someone else’s rights to safeguard someone else’s right?” it asked. To this, Mr Mehta said: “When internet is banned in a State or in some part of the State, there is just 10% people who are miscreants and the rest are the general public.”
Further, he contended that Telegram can be misused because of the app feature which allows editing of date and time. “In 2024, this has happened. The question paper was posted after exam was conducted, but they edited date to previous day of exam and then students were protesting on roads alleging that the paper was leaked.”
R Venkatramani, Attorney General of India, spoke for the government and maintained that there was full application of mind before blocking the app and that there was a “law and order situation” looming large over the authorities. “If our country cannot take preventive action, where will we go?”
The restrictions were issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act and will remain in force until June 22. A separate direction also required Telegram to disable the editing of previously sent messages until June 30.
The Director-General of the NTA Abhishek Singh NTA also said the representatives of messaging app Telegram were called in for meetings “at the highest levels” and warned about the misuse of the app’s features that facilitate “paper leak frauds” before issuing the temporary ban order.
Mr Singh said the primary motive behind government intervention was to halt the spread of engineered fake leaks that can spread panic among the students ahead of the NEET re-exam. “The government had previously approached Telegram regarding the misuse of two specific features, including making edited timestamps visible in Telegram groups and addressing the issue of lack of stringent naming filters for its groups. However, Telegram did not alter its system then,” Mr Singh said.
NTA was concerned about the modus operandi used by bad actors on Telegram to trigger mass panic by fabricating evidence of question paper leaks. Cheating syndicates have been systematically exploiting a specific loophole in Telegram’s group and channel synchronisation features.
For instance, a bad actor can create a public Telegram channel and link it to an associated group. Days before an exam, the administrator can upload a random PDF file on the channel, name it provocatively such as “NEET Question Paper Leaked.” The day after the actual exam, the operator then can use Telegram’s edit feature to replace the dummy PDF with the actual question paper. While the post inside the channel shows an ‘edited’ tag, the linked group retains the timestamp of the original post made days earlier. This creates a highly convincing illusion that the actual question paper was available on the platform before the exam began, sparking panic.
“After the ban, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on X that they are making the ‘edited’ label more visible to prevent backdating scams. “However, this change is still not visible on the app,” Mr Singh said. “Why can’t Telegram simply fix its metadata so that timestamp changes are accurately reflected in linked group chats,” he asked.
Pointing out that Telegram allows creation of alleged criminal groups with questionable names such as “Paper Leak NEET Mafia”, Mr Singh said the app has to “adhere to norms.” The NTA Director-General argued that the lack of stringent naming filters and the ability to rapidly obscure participant identities have turned the platform into a hub for various alleged illegal activities, ranging from paper leaks to investment fraud.
The move to ban Telegram has evoked a debate among government authorities, technical experts, and legal analysts over examination integrity versus digital liberties.
However, cybersecurity and policy experts have raised red flags over taking an absolutist approach against the platform. Nisarga Adhikary, a cybersecurity researcher at IIT-K, warned that a blanket ban or heavy-handed restriction “optimises for visibility rather than actual risk reduction.”
“Telegram is relatively mainstream and at least has identifiable infrastructure, legal points of contact, and a large amount of public activity,” Mr Adhikary said. “If determined actors are forced off it, they do not disappear. They migrate to platforms with stronger anonymity properties… pushing adversaries into darker corners of the ecosystem may simply reduce visibility into it.”
Mr Adhikary also pointed out the technical impracticality of demanding immediate software overhauls, stating it was not easy for Telegram to alter integral functions such as editing or archiving on short notice. He noted that the true edit timestamps are saved on Telegram’s servers and could possibly be accessed by law enforcement through standard legal notices.
The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), in a statement, argued that the government’s ban on Telegram was a band-aid solution and a disproportionate answer to exam fraud. “At the outset, it is important to note that Section 69A and the Blocking Rules of 2009 framed under it allow the government to block access to specific “information” on a computer resource. They do not extend to switching off an entire intermediary, still less to ordering a company to redesign its product by removing a feature for a whole country,” the IFF said.
IFF argued that the ban of Telegram was reactive and ineffective and would punish ordinary users instead of addressing the systemic source of exam leaks. “This blocking comes in the final days of NEET preparation, when thousands of students depend on Telegram for study groups, doubt-clearing, and shared resources. Also, it is important to consider that the source of exam papers leak will occur from inside the system, among insiders and across the printing and logistics chain, with the platform being the most downstream channel for distribution. Hence, switching off Telegram, is merely a deflection from the repeated failures that will continue while media attention is directed towards this Telegram ban,” it added.
The former Delhi chief minister and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal questioned the government’s decision to temporarily ban the platform as a measure to prevent examination paper leaks, alleging that such steps would not address the root cause of the problem.
In a video message posted on X, Mr Kejriwal asserted that banning the messaging platform was not the solution to the problem and claimed that the authorities were not serious about tackling the issue. “The business of paper leaks is worth billions of rupees,” he alleged, claiming that large sums of money generated through such activities reach influential people.
The former Delhi Chief Minister further alleged that money from paper leak rackets was being used for political purposes, including the purchase of legislators. Mr Kejriwal emphasised that paper leaks would continue unless systemic changes were introduced and called on people to come together to demand reforms. “The whole system will have to change,” he said.
