You guys need to hear about this because it's one of those situations where a tech decision is being used as political theater in front of 84 million users! India has completely blocked Telegram — yes, their MASSIVE market of ~84M people — but here's the twist: they claim it's only temporary until June 22 to stop test cheating. This isn't some random ban; it follows a massive scandal with the NEET medical school exam that over 2 million students took on May 3, after the CBSE switched to an On-Screen Marking system contracted out to a controversial firm. The results were so broken that one student literally pulled up his graded answer sheet and realized it wasn't even HIS paper — he studied all year and was about to be judged on someone else's work! Another student exposed actual vulnerabilities in the marking portal letting anyone hack in and edit scores, which is just horrifying for a high-stakes exam.

The NTA then threw hands and annulled everything because "evidence" showed Telegram channels titled things like "Paper Leaked NEET" selling paper access for cash. Instead of fixing the broken system, they nuked an app used by millions of ordinary people — and the Internet Freedom Foundation is already calling it a band-aid solution that punishes everyone instead of addressing the real source of leaks. There's even a deeper breakdown at Al Jazeera if you want to follow where this policy came from; I'll drop links below because this isn't just an app ban, it's the latest chapter in a corruption fight involving Modi and the CBSE that has been boiling for months. Seriously — blocking Telegram for 84M people to stop test fraud is one of those solutions so over-the-top I can barely wrap my head around it!

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2195086/india-blocks-telegram/