Kota, June 19 (IANS) After the Delhi High Court upheld the Centre’s suspension of Telegram till June 22, students preparing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2026 examination highlighted how the ban can prove to be a disadvantage as they received previous years’ papers and self-study material through the messaging app. Moreover, teachers also shared practice questions on the platform.

The NEET-UG 2026 re-examination is scheduled to be held on June 21, following the alleged May 3 paper leak.

Speaking to IANS, a student said that temporarily suspending Telegram is both good as well as bad.

“According to what the government is thinking, they believe paper leaks happen through Telegram. So, in one way it is a good step to stop that. But it also affects studies. We used to use Telegram for studying as well,” he added.

Underlining the demerits of banning the online platform, he mentioned: “We would get previous year papers, self-study material and other practice content from there. So that will be a difficulty now. The PDFs of teaching content were also available on the platform.”

Another student echoed that the teachers provided practice questions on the platform which aided their preparations for the examination.

A student who has been attending coaching classes for the exam at a Kota-based institute, said: “I feel the Union government has done well by banning Telegram, but there are other apps as well like Discord, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Something should be done so that paper leaks do not happen at all.”

“Suspending Telegram is only hiding the mistake that has already happened, but it cannot stop future problems,” he asserted

While backing the Union government’s decision, another student urged for permanent measures that would ensure such discrepancies are never repeated.

The Delhi High Court on Friday upheld the Centre’s decision to temporarily suspend Telegram’s services across India ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination, holding that the Union government had strictly followed the procedure prescribed under law while invoking emergency blocking powers.

Telegram had approached the Delhi High Court challenging the Centre’s decision to temporarily suspend its services across India till June 22 and disable its message-editing feature till June 30.

–IANS

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