Misleading advertising

Under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, consumer law advertising is observed as misleading which, by way of writing/visible representation/orally, falsely represents the goods of particular standard, quality, color, style, composition, model or any form of deceptive information which may cause the consumer to act in a way they might otherwise not.

The Central Consumer Protection Authority, on June 10, notified the guidelines for ‘Prevention of Misleading Advertisements,2022’. The present guidelines define “bait advertisement”, “surrogate advertisement” and explicitly states what constitutes as “free claim advertisements”. CCPA can impose penalty of 10 lakhs on manufacturers, advertisers and endorsers for those who violate the guidelines. Subsequent contraventions may impose penalty of upto 50 lakh rupees. Edited excerpts: pib.gov.in

False claims advertising involves misinformation and disinformation is malignant and morally retrograde to the global society. True information is sacrosanct in society to avoid any kind of rumors spreading through digital media. Generally, people rely on national/international regulatory bodies for credibility and reliability for verification. A strict regulatory framework needs to be setup with Suo motu surveillance in place to breach any false information available. In the crucial times of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people were targeted and mislead by pharmaceutical companies. For instance, on 23rd June 2020, National Institute of Medical Sciences & Research (NIMRS) and Patanjali Research Institute (PRI) launched Coronil, with PRI claiming 100 percent resistance against COVID-19 infection and announced the home delivery of the Ayurveda medicine kit via OrderMe app. But on the same day Ministry of AYUSH issued a notification to PRI and ordered it stop publishing or advertising cure for COVID infection which has not been scientifically approved.

There’s no infallible way to determine whether a claim is misleading or not. You can’t prove which medicine provides better efficacy, on the basis of a small statistics figure and draw out general conclusions of specific data provided. Advertising in the specific and general region refers to several regulations at a significant rate, which confounds both consumers and producers. On the global level, it requires scrupulous collected unbiased data to avoid false and misleading claims.