Patanjali: Stop misleading ads, Supreme Court orders Patanjali, warns of stiff penalties

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday objected to Patanjali Ayurved making “false” claims to cure diseases in advertisements for its products and threatened to impose costs on the company for resorting to such practices.
Hearing a petition filed by IMA which alleged that a smear campaign was organised by the group against the Covid-19 vaccination, a bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Prashant Kumar Mishra asked the Centre to hold consultations and come up with some recommendations to deal with misleading advertisements.

“All false and misleading advertisements of Patanjali Ayurved have to stop immediately. This court will take such infractions very seriously, and will consider imposing costs of up to Rs 1 crore on every product regarding which a false claim is made that it can cure a particular disease,” the bench said and posted the case to February for further hearing. Facing various criminal cases lodged by IMA for his controversial remarks against use of allopathic medicines during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ramdev had also approached the apex court which on October 9 issued notice to the Centre and the Association on his plea for quashing cases.

Ramdev has been booked under Sections 188, 269, 504 of the Indian Penal Code.
As per the IMA complaint, Ramdev had allegedly been propagating false information on social media against medicines being used by the medical fraternity.