Jairam Ramesh slams "incompetent" Modi govt over NEET row

In a post on X, Ramesh said, "The Prime Minister's go-to man on all scientific matters and a very distinguished mathematician otherwise is being held to account by Gen Z youngsters."

A technical "war of words" on social media between IIT Kanpur Director Manindra Agrawal and a group of "Gen Z" students has escalated into a major political flashpoint, with Congress leader Jairam Ramesh using the exchange to question the competence of the Prime Minister's scientific advisors. Taking a dig at the central government, he stated that even distinguished experts are being held accountable by the younger generation for becoming "drum-beaters" of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led administration.

In a post on X, Ramesh said, "The Prime Minister's go-to man on all scientific matters and a very distinguished mathematician otherwise is being held to account by Gen Z youngsters." "These are the pitfalls of allowing yourself to become a drum-beater of a Government that is incompetent, arrogant, and more interested in stunts than in actual governance," the Congress leader added.

Critiquing the government's response to the exam crisis, Ramesh listed various measures--including the ban on the messaging app Telegram--as "stunts" designed to distract from the core issue of paper leaks. "The Telegram ban is only to be added to a long list of other stunts (IAF transportation of question papers, the announcement that the PM is personally monitoring the situation) that have preoccupied the Modi Government since the cancellation of the NEET-UG Exam last month," Ramesh wrote.

The Congress leader concluded his post with a sharp jab at the Prime Minister's reliance on prepared speeches, stating, "It is far more important to ban the Teleprompter." Following the ban on Telegram by the Centre ahead of the NEET re-examination, the IIT Kanpur Director, a member of the high-level committee formed to reform the National Testing Agency (NTA), advocated for a ban or restrictions on Telegram.

He argued that the platform possesses a "special feature" allowing users to edit posts without leaving a trace, which he claimed could be used to spread "fake news of a leak that appears genuine." However, the claim was immediately challenged by two young tech-savvy students - Sarthak Sidhant and Nisarga Adhikary - who provided real-time evidence to the contrary.

Sidhant provided visual proof demonstrating that Telegram displays an "edited" tag, directly contradicting the Director's assertions regarding untraceable edits. Similarly, Adhikary highlighted the platform's architectural design for censorship resistance, pointing out that even when edit badges are hidden, metadata such as edit date, remains explicitly stored within the application's local database. Nisarga also highlighted the futility of a ban, explaining that Telegram is "built with censorship resistance in mind." By demonstrating how to bypass DNS-layer filtering and using built-in proxies, the student argued that "blocking a communication platform is far easier to announce than it is to enforce."

"Can't stop paper leaks > ends up blocking telegram," Nisarga added in a post that went viral. This comes after the Centre had ordered the blocking of Telegram on June 16, following a request from the National Testing Agency (NTA), which alleged that the platform was being used by organised cheating rackets to mislead and defraud candidates appearing for the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination scheduled on June 21.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) scheduled the retest following the cancellation of the May 3 exam due to paper leak controversies. Meanwhile, Telegram has approached the Delhi High Court, challenging the Central government's decision to temporarily block its operations in India until June 22 in connection with the upcoming NEET-UG 2026 re-examination. (ANI)