Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticized India's decision to temporarily block the messaging platform ahead of a nationwide medical entrance exam rerun, saying the measure punishes millions of ordinary users while doing little to curb exam leaks.

Telegram has also challenged the government order in a New Delhi court, arguing that the restrictions are unlawful and disproportionate, according to local media reports.

Indian authorities ordered Telegram to restrict access nationwide until after this weekend's rerun of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Undergraduate courses (NEET-UG) and to disable its message-editing feature through the end of June.

Officials said the measures are intended to prevent cheating after the original May exam was canceled over allegations that question papers had leaked, forcing more than two million candidates to retake the test.

"This punishes 150 million ordinary Telegram users in India — not the insiders who leaked the exam materials," Durov said in a statement Tuesday. "The ban hasn't stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps."

According to Durov, Telegram had cooperated with Indian authorities by removing hundreds of channels involved in distributing leaked exam material and related scams. He added that the platform had made its "edited" label more prominent to prevent attempts to backdate messages.

Indian authorities previously said scammers had exploited Telegram's editing feature by posting fake exam questions before the test and later replacing them with the real questions after the exam concluded, making it appear that the papers had leaked in advance.

In its court petition, cited by Indian legal media, Telegram said it had removed more than 900 links containing illegal NEET-related content and argued that targeted content removals would have been a less restrictive alternative than blocking the platform for millions of users.

The company also argued that the order disrupted students and educators who rely on Telegram for legitimate purposes, that it had been denied a hearing despite cooperating with authorities, and that singling out Telegram while leaving competing platforms untouched violated constitutional guarantees of equality.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

A local digital rights group had also criticized the Telegram restrictions, calling them "reactive and ineffective."