The story so far: On February 27, the Supreme Court restrained Patanjali Ayurved from discrediting allopathy in its campaigns, and from advertising products that claim to cure chronic conditions. Patanjaliâs ads present its products to people as a âpermanent reliefâ, which is âmisleadingâ and âa violation of the lawâ, the Bench remarked, citing provisions of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 (DMR&OA) and its Rules.
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The Bench also issued a contempt notice against the company and its Managing Director Acharya Balkrishna for failing to adhere to directions passed in November last year. The âentire country has been taken for a rideâ, the Bench said, while reprimanding the Union Government for its failure to take âurgent actionâ.
What is the case?
The case goes back to August 2022. IMA filed a petition in response to a Patanjali advert titled: âMISCONCEPTIONS SPREAD BY ALLOPATHY: SAVE YOURSELF AND THE COUNTRY FROM THE MISCONCEPTIONS SPREAD BY PHARMA AND MEDICAL INDUSTRY.â The petition presented two grievances: that the company is denigrating allopathy through a âcontinuous, systematic, and unabated spread of misinformation,â while also making exaggerated claims about its drugs which are purportedly based on âscientific, evidence-based medicines.â
âThey are attacking evidence-based medicines to promote their drugs âadvertisements of which are banned in our country,â explains Dr. K. V. Babu, an RTI activist and physician from Kannur. Such statements violate both the Drugs and Other Magical Remedies Act, 1954 (DOMA) and the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (CPA), the IMA has said.
In 2017, Patanjaliâs Divya Amla Juice (recommended to people with diabetes) and Shivlingi Beej were found to be of âsubstandard qualityâ by Haridwarâs Ayurveda and Unani Office, according to a Right to Information reply. In December 2022, Nepalâs drug regulator blacklisted Patanjaliâs Divya Pharmacy for failing to comply with WHOâs drug manufacturing standards. Other reports have also raised concerns about Patanjaliâs dubious quality checks and clinical trial evidence.
A Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah on November 21 last year warned Patanjali to not advertise permanent cures and threatened to impose a penalty of â¹1 crore for every product about which such claims are made. The Court refused to enter the âAllopathy v. Ayurvedaâ debate at the time. Patanjali assured the Court there âshall not be any violation of any law(s), especially relating to advertising or branding of productsâ and âthat no casual statements claiming medicinal efficacy or against any system of medicine will be released to the media in any form.â
âWhat do you mean by âpermanent reliefâ? There are only two types of permanent relief. One, the person dies. Two, the person is cured. There is no third âpermanent relief.ââJustice Ahsanuddin Amanullah on February 27, 2024
The company failed on both counts. One day after the hearing, Mr. Ramdev extolled Patanjali products at a press conference. Ads subsequently appeared in December and January in mainstream media. Per Dr. Babu, these violate the companyâs âcommitment to the Supreme Court.â A Patanjali ad dated January 7 claims its products are âmore effective than chemical-based synthetic medicines of allopathy.â Notably, Mr. Ramdev has previously called allopathy a âstupid and bankrupt science.â
ââHow can Patanjali claim to completely cure blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, asthma and obesity?â said an irate Bench of the Supreme Court. â
In addition to issuing contempt notices to Patanjaliâs owners, the Bench chided the Union Government. âCommon, gullible people are involved…This petition was filed in 2022. For two years you did nothing.â
What does the law say?
The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 regulates false medical advertisements in India. People or entities can be sentenced to up to six months imprisonment, and/or a fine for the first offence. The period of imprisonment can extend to one year for a second offence. The CPA also penalises misleading advertisements and carries a more stringent sentence that can extend to two years.
Section 3 prohibits ads for the âdiagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of any disease, disorder or condition specified in the Schedule.â The Schedule includes diabetes, heart diseases, glaucoma and 51 other diseases. A 2020 amendment has proposed to include liver disorders in the Schedule. âNot all advertisements are prohibited â only those on diseases specified in the Schedule,â Dr. Babu points out.
In addition, Section 4 of the Magic Remedies Act prohibits any âmisleading advertisement,â which âdirectly or indirectlyâ gives a false impression regarding the true character of the drug, makes a false claim for the drug, or âis otherwise false or misleading in any material particular.â
Dr. Babu has seen at least 25 advertisements violating these norms over the last two years â âthere can be any number of violations,â spread across print, television, WhatsApp, social media. In one of his regular programmes âYog ke Rang, Swami Ramdev ke Sang,â Baba Ramdev claimed, âModern medical science says cataract and glaucoma canât be fixed. I had done it 30 years ago. Glaucoma gets better 100%.â Researchers agree there is no effective, proven and permanent treatment for glaucoma, but âPatanjali claims you can just put some drops and cure these conditions,â Dr. Babu adds.
Patanjaliâs misleading ads have come under legal scrutiny before. The IMA has filed cases against Patanjali and Mr. Ramdev in different States for making spurious statements about COVID-19 cures, the efficacy of oxygen cylinders and for stoking vaccine hesitancy. The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) and the Uttarakhand Ayurvedic and Unani Services issued a notice in 2022 to withdraw misleading ads. The Uttarakhand body in 2023 ordered Patanjali to remove all ads and also banned the production of five drugs. The ban was reversed four days later. Patanjali has dismissed these cases as part of a conspiracy designed by an âanti-Ayurveda drug mafia.â
Patanjali has never denied that its ads violate provisions of the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act.
Is Patanjali skirting the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act?
Medical practitioners and experts suggest that The DMR&OA is an imperfect law. These limitations allow companies like Patanjali to go unscathed despite repeated offences. âIt itself is a weak law that is getting violated repeatedly â that is a problem now,â Dr. Babu notes.
For one, Patanjaliâs adverts and Mr. Ramdevâs programmes always recommend a mix of treatments â say yoga, with lifestyle changes and Patanjali meds. âTheyâre playing safe. They can easily say that if something doesnât work, you might not have done, say, yoga correctly…These are borderline violations. Thereâs no 100% contravention,â Ravindra Joshi, former assistant commissioner at the Food and Drugs Administration Maharashtra told The Morning Context last year.
Mr. Ramdevâs role in the company may also exempt him from scrutiny â he is the brand ambassador but does not hold a legal stake in Patanjali Ayurved. âHe is a sanyasi (monk). He does not hold any position in the company and is only a yoga guru,â Mr. Sanghi told the Supreme Court when asked about Ramdevâs position in the company. The Bench said, âIf we take a view, the persons who are in this advertisement [Mr. Balakrishna and Mr. Ramdev] should be made parties [to the case].â
Moreover, convictions under the Magic Remedies Act are few and far between. During the period between August 2018 to June 2021, 14,876 instances of misleading advertisements of Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and Homoeopathy (ASU&H) drugs have been reported by the Pharmacovigilance centres, the Ministry of AYUSH said in a response to Lok Sabha. It is unclear how many were investigated and led to convictions. Public health activist Dinesh Thakur and lawyer Prashant Reddy wrote in an article that in most cases, drug inspectors prosecute only the manufacturer, and if penalties are imposed, they are usually in the range of Rs. 20,000 âdespite the law not specifically mentioning an outer limitâ.
The âweakâ legal framework is made weaker through insipid implementation, Dr. Babu says. Section 8 of DOMA places the responsibility of implementing the Act on State Regulatory Authorities. In 2017, the Ministry of AYUSH also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Advertising Standards Council of India, to identify illegal and misleading advertisements and agreed to bring cases to the notice of the State Regulatory Authorities.
In this case, âthe Uttarakhand licensing authority is not listening to the repeated communications from the Ministry of AYUSH…they are not implementing it,â says Dr. Babu. Between 2022 and 2024, the Ministry sent five communications to Uttarakhand Ayurveda and Unani Services, bringing these violations to their attention. The latest was sent on February 2, 2024, according to an affidavit presented in the Supreme Court.
AÂ âturning pointâ in the current legal tussle came in February 2022, when a prominent ad on newspapersâ front pages boasted of Lipidomâs ability to reduce cholesterol and control blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. âThis was a very provocative advertisement,â Dr. Babu notes, for it exaggerated the productâs efficacy while also discrediting science-backed research.
Months later, they claimed to have developed an effective treatment for insulin-dependent diabetics â people with type 1 diabetes â saying they could now stop taking insulin. âInsulin discovery earned a Nobel prize in 1923. If somebody has discovered a treatment that can surpass this, they should be given Nobel prize achievement,â Dr. Babu remarked. Stopping insulin can also be life-threatening â the American Diabetes Association recognises access to insulin as a âliteral matter of life and death.â
In a letter dated 2016, the Ayurvedic Drug Manufacturersâ Association (of which Patanjali is a member) admitted that the implementation of the Magic Remedies Act is âweak.â This letter was accessed by Dr. Babu and has been reviewed by The Hindu.Â
What next?
Such misleading ads are not only unlawful, but also pose a risk to public health by spreading misinformation about evidence-based treatments that prey on the vulnerable, public health experts argue. Take the insulin ad, which was widely criticised for peddling a âmiracle cureâ. Following criticism, Patanjali published another ad in December 2022: this one showed folded hands, placed next to a text that read: âDonât stop insulin.â
Patanjaliâs misleading ads are a âmajor public health issue and have to be addressed at any cost,â Dr. Babu says.
Patanjaliâs success and ability to remain immune to legal scrutiny is a symptom of the problem: of people not receiving any care which is affordable or accessible, says Shivangi Shankar, a public health expert and modern medicine doctor. â…the underprivileged are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either they suffer due to delayed care from modern medicine or from a misguided and predatory advertisement that …further exploits them,â she says.
For now, the Courtâs ruling has placed a temporary ban on all forms of advertisements for Patanjaliâs medicinal products, and refused to even allow ads âwithout adjectives.â It reiterated the earlier warning about smearing modern medicine treatments, noting that âallopathy cannot be degraded/defamed in the eyes of the public like this.â
Patanjaliâs lawyer senior advocate Vipin Sanghi called the Supreme Courtâs temporary ban âunfairâ and said the company is âentitled to advertiseâ its products.
The case will be heard next on March 19. Dr. Babu believes the current Supreme Court direction will compel the Uttarakhand licensing body to act. âAct or perish, itâs their choice,â he says. Â