The Supreme Court has been unrelenting in its criticism of Patanjali Ayurved over the past several months and this week, it rejected a second apology from the Uttarakhand-based company’s founder Baba Ramdev and managing director Acharya Balkrishna.
On 10 April, the ire of the top court bench, including justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah, was not only directed against Patanjali but also against the Uttarakhand government. The state was pulled up for being in a “deep slumber” and not acting according to the law against Divya Pharmacy for issuing advertisements in breach of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954. Divya Pharmacy is a unit of Patanjali that manufactures ayurvedic products.
The Patanjali advertisement case has more than one layers — a state government that allegedly let the rules be flouted, an ayurveda giant that seems to be on a backfoot after having captured people’s imagination for over a decade, and a lobby of modern medicine practitioners who are fighting a battle against misinformation spread against their profession. That is why Patanjali Ayurveda is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
These observations come as part of the hearing of a petition filed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) — the largest body of doctors in India — which said that the conglomerate, through repeated advertisements, had been disparaging modern medicine while offering “a permanent solution for lifestyle disorders, incurable, chronic and genetic diseases”.
On 10 April, the top court also directed the Uttarakhand state licensing authority to take action against Patanjali and ordered the company to explain its continued defiance through detailed affidavits.
The development is the latest in a long-running legal battle that began in August 2022 when the IMA reached out to the Supreme Court. The doctors’ body said that there is a “continuous, synchronised and concerted campaign against the professionals in the modern medicine, in the eyes of everyone including the patients – by and at the behest of certain vested interests, who are neither experts nor belong to the field of modern medicine.”
Ramdev and his Ayurvedic conglomerate have been in the eye of the storm after the Supreme Court rejected the “unqualified and unconditional apology” by him and close associate Balkrishna filed on 6 April. Four days ago, the top court had slammed the duo for filing a “perfunctory” apology and rejected it at the outset.
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History of misleading claims
The Drug and Magic Remedies act clearly prohibits the advertisement of drugs for the treatment of certain diseases and disorders.
While constantly berating the modern medicine through its print and electronic advertisements, the IMA pointed out in its petition, Patnajali has been projecting its own medicines to be capable of curing the diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, among others, permanently.
The trigger for the IMA action was the launch of an Ayurvedic medicine “Coronil” — just before the second wave of the Covid-19 in 2019 which was followed by ads — which claimed it was the “first evidence-based medicine for Covid-19” and the ad poster read the product was certified and recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The United Nations world health body, however, denied — through a twitter post — that it had certified any traditional medicine to cure coronavirus.
The IMA immediately launched an attack on Patanjali, calling the WHO certification claim as a “blatant lie” and asked for an explanation from the then Union health minister Harshvardhan, also a doctor, who had attended the launch of the product by Patanjali.
In response, Ramdev went on an anti-modern medicine (which he called allopathy) rant in a video that went viral prompting the IMA to send a legal notice to Ramdev seeking an apology and withdrawal of those statements.
However, in 2022, Patanjali came up with full page advertisements in leading newspapers in the country which was titled as “Misconceptions Spread By Allopathy: Save Yourself And The Country From The Misconceptions Spread By Pharma And Medical Industry.”
This was the trigger for the IMA to knock at the doors of the SC, which took exceptions to the claims made by Patanjali over the last several months and issued strong observations against the company, its misleading claims and inaction by the Centre and state authorities.
ThePrint reached out to Patanjali spokesperson S K Tijarawala for his comments over phone calls but got no response. This copy will be updated if and when we get a response from him.
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Complaints gone unheard
Dr K V Babu, an ophthalmologist from Kerala who has been highlighting the misleading ads by Patanjali over the last two years told ThePrint that he had been complaining to the Ministry of Ayush, the state licensing authority (SLA) of Uttarakhand, the central consumer protection authority and at last the Prime Minister’s Office repeatedly against the continuing violation of magic remedies Act by Patanjali.
“Even after the communication from Ayush ministry to the SLA of Uttarakhand on February 2nd this year based on the complaint to the PMO, the SLA is sitting over it,” he said.
“With the SC’s recent observations against Patanjali, my stand is vindicated,” Babu said.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled next week.
Meanwhile, Babu also stressed that firms like Patanjali had been taking advantage of the loopholes in the drug and magic remedies Act, which needs to be strengthened urgently.