The court ordered Patanjali Ayurved to make sure that no insignificant remarks are made to the media and to refrain from publishing any similar ads in the future.
On Tuesday, November 21, the Supreme Court issued a directive to Patanjali Ayurved, threatening severe penalties if the company continued to disseminate deceptive statements and advertisements disparaging contemporary medical systems.
The Indian Medical Association had filed a suit against deceptive marketing, which the bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Prashant Kumar Mishra was deliberating.
“All such false and misleading advertisements of Patanjali Ayurved have to stop immediately. The court will take any such infraction very seriously, and the court will also consider imposing costs to the extent of Rs 1 crore on every product regarding which a false claim is made that it can ‘cure’ a particular disease,” Justice Amanullah orally said.
The court ordered Patanjali Ayurved to make sure that no insignificant remarks are made to the media and to refrain from publishing any similar ads in the future.
According to LiveLaw, the bench stated that the issue at hand was not “allopathy vs. ayurveda,” but rather how to effectively address the issue of deceptive medical advertising.
In representing the Union Government, the bench instructed additional solicitor general K.M. Nataraj to identify a “viable solution” to the issue and, following consultations, provide appropriate suggestions. The issue is scheduled to be revisited on February 5, 2024.
The petition was filed in mid-2022 after Patanjali published an advertisement in July that the IMA said sought to “promote traditional medicine by disparaging allopathy” and a “continuous, systematic, and unabated spread of misinformation” regarding allopathy. Last year, issuing notice, the court pulled up Baba Ramdev.
“What happened to Baba Ramdev? He can popularise his system, but why should he criticise other systems. We all respect him, he popularised yoga but he shouldn’t criticise other systems. What is the guarantee that his system will work? He cannot refuse doctor system. He must exercise restraint in abusing other systems,” said then Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana.
According to the IMA petition, Patanjali has persisted in its “disregard for the law, violating the mandate with impunity,” despite the fact that the Ministry of AYUSH and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the purpose of monitoring deceptive advertisements of AYUSH drugs.
In a different case, the Delhi High Court last year ordered Baba Ramdev to refrain from “misleading” people about allopathy and to stop saying anything more about Patanjali’s Coronil medicine than the authorities had said. The court objected to Patanjali’s promotion of it as a COVID-19 “cure.”
