E-Paper
Is Telegram working after re-NEET? App restored on Playstore, not on Apple's Appstore yet
The government on June 16 directed Telegram and its associated URLs to be blocked across India till June 22 ahead of the June 21 NEET-UG re-exam.
Telegram, the instant messaging app on which government imposed access restrictions ahead of the June 21 re-exam for medical entrance examination National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG), appears to remain blocked for some users in India who are still unable to send or receive messages even after the June 22 expiry date for the curbs.
Instant messaging app Telegram became operational for some existing users on Tuesday morning but remained delisted on application stores of Google and Apple. The app was available on Google Playstore later but continued to remain delisted on Apple's Appstore till around 10 am on Tuesday.
The government, in an interim order issued on June 16 under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, directed Telegram and its associated URLs to be blocked across India till June 22, and ordered the platform to disable its message-editing feature till June 30.
While some users continued to experience access restrictions and some were able access the messaging app on Tuesday, a day after it was scheduled to be restored, an IT official told HT that there are no plans to extend the ban, indicating that the restoration of services might be getting rolled out in a phased manner.
Following a hearing before a committee constituted under Rule 7 of the IT blocking rules on June 17, the secretary, ministry of electronics and information technology, passed a final order on June 18 confirming the interim directions — the order under challenge.
Telegram blocked ahead of NEET re-exam
The block was seen as an attempt to prevent any possible irregularities ahead of the June 21 re-exam of NEET-UG, which was originally held on May 3 but got cancelled on May 12 after overlaps emerged between a leaked guess paper and the actual one, triggering a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe and 13 arrests.
NEET (UG) is the nationwide entrance examination conducted by the NTA for admission in undergraduate medical programmes.
The government-imposed block on Telegram, used widely by students to share study material, later reached the Delhi high court, which on June 19 upheld upheld the government’s decision to block Telegram for six days ahead of NEET-UG re-exam.
The court said there were sufficient reasons to arrive at the decision to protect the interests of millions of students appearing for the exam, HT reported earlier.
Officials contended in the court in previous hearings that some Telegram channels — some named “Private Mafia” and “PAPER LEAKED NEET” — sold fake question papers for up to ₹10 lakh, while administrators exploited the platform’s message-editing feature, which alters content without updating the timestamp, to fabricate post-exam “proof” of leaks. Channel-by-channel takedowns kept failing as removed channels resurfaced through mirrors — the government’s stated reason for blocking the platform outright ahead of Sunday’s re-examination.
