New Delhi: Acharya Balkrishna, the managing director of Patanjali and a close aide of Yoga guru Ramdev, offered an unconditional apology to the Supreme Court Thursday for the misleading publicity carried out by the company about its medicines’ “miraculous abilities”.
The company’s advertising campaigns had also raised doubt over the effectiveness of modern medicine.
However, Balkrishna’s affidavit, containing the apology, termed the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 as “archaic”, as the last change made to it was in 1996.
Then scientific evidence in Ayurveda research was lacking, the affidavit said, adding the company’s current medicine products were backed by “evidence-based scientific data”.
The affidavit comes in response to the top court’s order summoning Baba Ramdev and Balkrishna. The two were directed to appear in person before the court on 2 April after a bench, led by Justice Hima Kohli, was informed that the company had violated an undertaking where it said it would refrain from offensive advertisements that cast aspersions on modern medicine.
Further, the company had failed to file an affidavit within the two-week period that was fixed by the court on 27 February.
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The order was passed on a petition filed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in which the doctors’ body sought to restrain Patanjali from releasing what it called “false and misleading” claims for curing diseases and showing modern medicine in a negative light.
In his short six-page affidavit Thursday, Balkrishna said he “regrets” the company’s advertisement containing the “offending sentences”. He claimed the advertisements were issued “inadvertently”.
“The deponent regrets that the advertisement in question, which was meant to contain only general statements, inadvertently included the offending sentences. The deponent on behalf of the respondent (Patanjali Ayurved) submits an unqualified apology before this court for the breach of the statement recorded in the order on 21 November, 2023,” read the affidavit, assuring the court that such advertisements would not be issued in future.
The document further claimed the publicity department, responsible for releasing the advertisements, was not aware of the court order.
On the 1954 law being “outdated”, Balkrishna said that Patanjali possessed evidence-based scientific data with clinical research conducted in Ayurveda, which, he said, would “demonstrate advances made through scientific research in the context of diseases mentioned in the Schedule to the 1954 Act”. This schedule listed out diseases on which advertisements claiming cure was prohibited.
The Centre, which too is a respondent in the case, has said that in May 2023 it asked the Uttarakhand government’s state licensing authority (SLA) to take action under the law and ensure the removal of Patanjali’s advertisements. It said the SLA was supposed to act on it. On 8 March, this year, the top court had also asked SLA to give an action-taken report.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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