Government officials have identified 53 instances of misleading advertisements by Patanjali Ayurved, associated with yoga televangelist Ramdev, for products promoted for blood pressure, diabetes, goitre, glaucoma and high cholesterol, the Centre has said in line with allegations by a Kerala-based doctor.
The ayush (ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy) ministry has also said it had directed the ayurveda and unani licensing department in Uttarakhand on February 10 to “take appropriate action” under the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954, which penalises objectionable advertisements.
The ministry said its pharmaco-vigilance centres had reported 18 misleading advertisements for BPgrit, 15 for Madhugrit, 10 for Eyegrit, 3 for Thyrogrit and 7 for Lipidom over the past eight months.
The ministry was responding on March 28 to a question in the Rajya Sabha from member V. Sivadasan.
A Kerala-based ophthalmologist, K.V. Babu, had complained to the central drug regulators in February last year that the advertisements for these products violated the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954, which prohibits advertisements for specific health disorders.
The Uttarakhand licensing department had on November 9 last year ordered Divya Pharmacy, Patanjali’s manufacturing unit, to stop producing the five drugs. But it retracted the order three days later.
Divya Pharmacy argued that the rules prohibiting advertisements of certain products did not apply to ayurvedic medicines.
The company cited a 2019 Bombay High Court order that had stayed Rule 170, a provision the Centre had introduced in 2018 to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1945 to curb misleading advertisements of traditional medicines.
Babu said he had written eight times to the Uttarakhand department and four times to the ayush ministry since November 2022, arguing that the stay on Rule 170 was no reason for advertisements to violate the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954, since the Rule pertained to a different act.
“The ministry now appears to have accepted this,” Babu said on Saturday, citing the ayush ministry’s March 28 answer in Parliament and a February 14 letter from ayush minister Sarbananda Sonowalto Congress MP Karti Chidambaram saying action had been ordered.
Sonowal, responding to an email query from Kartithat requested action against Patanjali Ayurved’s misleading advertisements, had said: “The matter has been examined… the state licensing authority, Uttarakhand, has been directed to take appropriate action as deemed fit… in light of the Drugs and MagicRemedies Act 1954.” Sonowal said the ayush ministry had sent the order on February 10.
“But it is unclear what, if any, action the Uttarakhand state licensing authority has taken against the company after receiving the February 10 letter from the ayush ministry,” Babu said.
“The central and state officers who allowed Patanjalito continuously violate drug laws should also be punished.” A query sent by this newspaper to Divya Pharmacy seeking its responses to the ayush ministry’s observations in Parliament and in the letter to Karti has not evoked any reply.
The Indian Medical Association has often said modern doctors are not opposed to ayurveda but want traditional medicines to be backed by adequate scientific evidence and their advertisements to comply with laws of the land.
