Patanjali is an Ayurvedic FMCG company which is co-founded by Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna. Patanjali is going to take action against the Advertising Standards Council of India(ASCI) for what it says are “unlawful actions” by the body.
Patanjali’s legal recourse will rest on a Bombay High Court matter of 2015 where the jurisdiction of the self-regulatory body was challenged by a company called Teleshop. Patanjali’s legal team is expected to use this verdict to present its case of the body lacking the legal backstop to pull up advertisers.
SK Tijarawala who is spokesperson of Patanjali said that we are talking to our legal team and we will move court soon against ASCI.
ASCI writes to wandering advertisers when complaints against ASCI’s ads are received. The advertiser is asked to modify the ads by ASCI as quickly as possible. For the records, the Intra-industry complaints constitute a bulk of ASCI’s complaints. ASCI sources say that large advertisers agree with its decisions.
The Ayurvediv company Patanjali have a different point of view on this matter. ASCI’s repeated notices to it over misleading claims made by the latter in its ads. In the last few months, the Council Complaints Council(CCC) of ASCI is its core group formed for grievance redressal. The CCC has upheld a number of complaints against Patanjali in many categories from foods to beverages, hair care, personal care and allied products.
The most prominent of these was a matter recently involving Patanjali’s edible oil. The Solvent Extractors Association of India accused the Patanjali company of disparaging its products. This matter was reported to not only ASCI, but also the Food Safety & Standards Association of India (FSSAI). It is forcing Patanjali to take the ad off air. In recent weeks, the ad has staged a comeback on television.
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