Misleading Ads Case: Supreme Court Bats For Centralised Consumer Complaints System

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought a response from the AYUSH Ministry on its suggestion of setting up a centralised dashboard for tracking consumer complaints pertaining to misleading advertisements of medical products.

The court’s suggestion came in the backdrop of the fact that there was no proper system in place to monitor complaints pertaining to misleading ads in the healthcare sector, especially when complaints were forwarded from one state to another.

The court was informed that a large number of complaints have been forwarded by some states to other states for the reason that manufacturing units regarding which the complaints were received were not located in the state where the complaint was received.

"As of now, there is no data with respect to the action taken by the receiving states, leaving the consumers helpless and in the dark regarding the action taken on these complaints," the court noted.

It was highlighted that there's poor implementation of penalties for flouting statutes dealing with the advertisement of medicines and healthcare products. The court was told that the states rarely penalise and take action on infractions by defaulters.

The court noted a suggestion regarding a more centralised system for lodging complaints regarding misleading advertisements, as most of the consumers are clueless about this very first step. "That's the biggest issue," the court said. It said that the Ministry of Consumer Affairs must take this aspect into consideration.

The court said that the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has been abysmal in dealing with consumer complaints ever since its Memorandum of Understanding with the Advertising Standards Council of India expired in 2020.

"Apart from a quick redressal of complaints, the ASCI used to take voluntary actions against misleading advertisements," the court said, while asking the MCA for reasons as to why its MoU with the ASCI wasn't extended beyond 2020.

It was observed that during its tenure with the ASCI, the Ministry had great success in dealing with consumer grievances. As many as 2,505 complaints, out of 2,573, were resolved during the tenure. After the MoU expired, the complaints dwindled dramatically, the court said.

The case began in November last year, when the apex court issued a stern warning to Ramdev and his multinational conglomerate for downplaying the effects of modern medicine.

Some of Patanjali's commercials claimed its medicines could cure a number of illnesses while simultaneously disparaging modern medicine.

The court had said that it would issue a hefty penalty for all those misleading advertisements that promise to cure diseases such as asthma, obesity, and the like.

At the time, Patanjali told the court that it would make sure that going forward, no casual statements claiming medicinal efficacy against any system of medicine would be released to the media in any form.

However, a day after the court's stern remarks, Patanjali came out with a media statement saying that it was not making any "false advertisements or propaganda" regarding its products and that it would not object if the top court were to impose a fine or "even give us a death sentence" if found making misleading claims.

This prompted the apex court to come down on Baba Ramdev and his conglomerate with all guns blazing for openly flouting court orders.

The entire fiasco has also led the court to reprimand the Union government and various other authorities for their inaction on the wider issue of misleading advertisements for drugs and medicines.