The Supreme Court has issued a contempt notice to Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda and its managing director Acharya Balkrishna for violating its order against misleading advertisements of its products. The court has also pulled up the Centre for not taking action.
The court has also restrained the company from advertising its medicinal products till further order. The apex court pulled up Patanjali conglomerate while hearing an Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) plea regarding ‘misinformation against Allopathy’.
As per the IMA complaint, Ramdev had allegedly been propagating false information on social media against medicines being used by the medical fraternity. The court has posted the next hearing on March 15. Hearing the matter, Justice Amanullah said, “Misleading advertisements cannot be tolerated at all.”
Senior advocate PS Patwalia, representing the IMA, highlighted that Patanjali had claimed to ‘completely cure’ diabetes and asthma with the help of yoga. In November last year, 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 had said before posting the matter for February.
Facing various criminal cases lodged by IMA for his controversial remarks against the 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 (IPC).
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