Telegram Founder Slams India Ban Over NEET Exam Leak Probe, Calls It Unfair to Users | NewsX

[00:00:03]Hello and a very good morning viewers.

[00:00:04]You're watching News X. I'm Kriti Mehta.

[00:00:06]Now Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging app, has said on Tuesday that by temporarily banning Telegram in the country, the Indian authorities have punished over 150 million ordinary users in India. The ban has not stopped anything and the leaks simply moved to other apps, Durov said.

[00:00:27]India has temporarily blocked the Telegram messaging app saying it was used to try to defraud candidates for a national medical entrance test, which had already been hit by allegations of leaked paper last month. That led to millions of results being canceled.

[00:00:52]Arzoo Sayed is now joining us on this.

[00:00:54]Arzoo, take us through the entire statement of the Telegram founder and what kind of losses is the app looking at in the time that it is banned in India ahead of NEET?

[00:01:08]>> Uh well, yes, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has in fact reacted to the ban on Telegram for a few days in India and in fact he wrote that India's IT ministry banned Telegram for 1 week because some users shared leaked exam questions.

[00:01:28]This punishes 150 million plus ordinary Telegram users in India, not the insider who leaked the exam materials. And the ban has not stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps. This is what he said. In fact, apart from this, the founder has also shared one tweet, you know, which was done by one of the ex-user and she wrote that my brother's NEET uh PG notes, videos, and paid the study groups were on the Telegram. And Telegram Telegram got banned. So, now he got stuck messaging, you know, pirated content scammers just to access what he already paid for. And to stop what leaked uh new PG paper, you broke access for thousands of honest aspirants. Also, the source of the leak was free. The medium gets banned, the student gets punished. This is the solution to the question mark. So, definitely Now, these these are the reactions which are coming in. And as far as uh the uh ban is concerned, the uh ministry has taken this step to ensure that uh there is no uh you know, leak of uh misinformation or there's no leak of any uh information regarding the uh NEET uh re-NEET exam that is scheduled for 21st June. Yes.

[00:03:09]>> Once again, take us through what has the government said on this?

[00:03:23]>> Uh you know, to uh uh you know, to ensure that no information gets leaked.

[00:03:29]And it was uh noted that you know, the um the the Telegram has been used to share uh the several uh you know, information. And also, the paper was uh shared through the uh Telegram platform. And now, India has separately restricted the access to the messaging app Telegram to prevent exam fraud during a a crucial test during national test and also the government investigation found that the telegram is being used by cheating rackets to leak fraud candidates.

[00:04:02]But you know, the telegram system that the move punishes 150 million ordinary users of the app in India and not those that leak the exam material. Last month December irregularities in the exam process lead to the cancellation of the national test affecting millions of the student and you know there was a portal that was held. And now the messaging platform Telegram slammed the Indian government's move to temporarily block the access to the app to prevent exam fraud. And the Indian authorities restricted the access to Telegram in an effort to prevent the exam fraud after the cancellation of the crucial test. And now this remains to be seen because there are a lot of reactions that are coming in. Several In fact, students have also shared on X sharing their concern regarding their notes and the study material that is already there that that is prevailing on the Telegram and also the the Telegram app that they are using for their study purpose. So that's also affecting them. So yes, this move is in a response to the organized use of Telegram platform by the cheating rackets to leak fraud candidates. This is what the NCA has said. Yes.

[00:05:24]>> All right. With that viewers, let's take a look at some of the foreign media coverage of uh this news a piece. Now we're looking at how DW has covered it. DW says that