SC summons Patanjali’s Ramdev, Acharya Balkrishna for violating contempt notice

The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, 19 March ordered Patanjali Ayurveda's managing director Acharya Balkrishna and co-founder Baba Ramdev to appear before it on the next hearing in the misleading advertising case for not responding to the contempt notice.

The bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah were hearing a case where it had previously issued a contempt notice to both Balkrishna and Ramdev for continuing to publish misleading advertisements about their products.

During the hearing on Tuesday, when the Bench was informed that the duo had not filed a reply to the contempt notice, the court decided to ask them to appear personally for the next hearing.

"On the last date of hearing, notice to show cause was issued to the Respondent No. 5 (Patanjali) and its Managing Director as to why the contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against them. A period of two weeks was granted to file a reply and reply is not on record. In view of the aforesaid facts and circumstances, it is deemed appropriate to direct the presence of the MD of Patanjali on the next date of the hearing. Having gone through the advertisements, and on noticing that the said advertisements reflect endorsements thereof by Acharya Ramdev, it is deemed appropriate to issue show cause notice as to why the contempt of proceedings should not be issued against him too. The managing director of Patanjali shall remain present on the next date of hearing along with the newly impleaded proposed contemnor Acharya Ramdev,” stated the bench.

When senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who was appearing for Patanjali, was asked about the response to the contempt notice, he said the reply couldn’t be filed. “It was a very short reply,” said Rohatgi.

Rohatgi tried to wriggle out of the situation, but the judges said there would be consequences to this action as they had to take this matter seriously. They pointed out that Patanjali had been given two weeks instead of the usual one week to file a response.

The Supreme Court, on 27 February, had imposed a temporary ban on Patanjali Ayurved from advertising or branding its products as 'medicines' and reminded it to stop its "false and misleading" advertisements claiming these so-called medicines would provide all kinds of remedies.

The Court was hearing a petition filed by the Indian Medical Association in 2022 to clamp down on the smear campaign against vaccination drives and evidence-based medicines by Ramdev. The petition also alleged that Patanjali’s advertisements made false claims about curing certain diseases, such as asthma.

The IMA petition states that though the Ministry of AYUSH signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) for monitoring misleading advertisements of AYUSH drugs, Patanjali has continued its 'disregard for the law, violating the mandate with impunity'.

The bench was critical of the Union government too for not taking action against the company, and asked what action had been taken under the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954, with respect to the Patanjali advertisements since the last order was passed.

The court that Patanjali had been taking the country for a ride by making misleading claims that its medicines would cure certain diseases despite no empirical evidence for the same. Justice Amanullah addressed additional solicitor general K.M. Nataraj, saying: “The entire country is taken for a ride! You wait for two years when the Act says (misleading advertisement) is prohibited”.

During the last hearing, IMA lawyer P.S. Patwalia pointed out that even though Patanjali had been pulled up last year, they had held a press conference the “very next day after the order”.

When the court asked what the AYUSH ministry had to say on the matter, Patwalia underscored that there was no question of regulation as Patanjali could not have found a cure for blood pressure issues.

When the bench questioned Patanjali’s lawyer Vipin Sanghi about this, he attempted to divert the issue by stating that “as far as Baba Ramdev is concerned, he is a sanyasi”.

The irate court wanted to ban all advertisements from Patanjali, but Sanghi argued that this was excessive as the company manufactures other products such as toothpaste that are unaffected by the Act, and a complete ban would affect their commercial operations far beyond the intended ambit of the plea.

The bench then modified the order to specify that the ban would apply to all products related to diseases specified under the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954.

In November 2023, the apex had court pulled up Patanjali Ayurved for continuing to publish misleading claims and advertisements against evidence-based medicine, and warned that the court would consider “imposing costs to the extent of Rs 1 crore on every product regarding which a false claim is made that it can ‘cure’ a particular disease”.

Then the bench, also led by Justice Amanullah, had underscored that it wasn’t a debate between evidence-based medicine and Ayurvedic products.

The bench had then asked Nataraj to come up with a viable solution to the problem.