The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Centre for choosing “to keep its eyes shut when Patanjali was going to town saying that there was no relief for Covid in allopathy”.

Asking Patanjali Ayurveda to file a fresh affidavit in the contempt proceedings initiated against the company, the apex court tore into the Centre for failing to rein in the firm from carrying out misleading advertisements about permanent cures for various incurable ailments.

A bench of Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah also directed yoga practitioner Ramdev, associated with Patanjali, and Acharya Balkrishna, the managing director of the company, to be personally present again at the next hearing on April 10.

The duo were present in the court on Tuesday in keeping with a directive on March 19.

The bench asked solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, why it failed to take any action against the company for its misleading advertisements in the media despite the ayush ministry issuing a notice in 2020 stating Patanjali’s medicines do not offer any permanent cure for Covid patients.

“You yourself… at the time when Covid was at its peak had specifically said that the product that they have come out with cannot be backed with enough material which they claim they have and at best it is supplementary to the main medicine. What did you do to publicise that to the public at large?

“We are wondering why the Union of India chose to keep its eyes shut when Patanjali was going to town saying that there was no relief for Covid in allopathy,” Justice Kohli, heading the bench, said.

Justice Amanullah said. “He (Ramdev) has done a lot for yoga but that cannot be stretched to pick holes in everything else.”

The court took exception to Patanjali and Ramdev continuing to make allegedly misleading claims about permanent cures for various other ailments despite giving a solemn undertaking to the court in November that it would not indulge in any such practice.

“It is a mistake and the majesty of the court cannot be disrespected. This is a lesson learnt,” senior advocate Balbir Singh, representing Ramdev, told the bench.

When Mehta said the Centre had warned the company not to carry out any misleading claims, the bench brushed aside the submission.

“In our opinion, the Act does not contemplate a warning in the teeth of gross non-compliance with the statute. What you have to dispel is that you and the state government are not complicit in this whole activity. Disparaging other fields of medicine in the manner that has been done by the proposed contemnors is most unacceptable,” the bench observed.

The court also refused to accept the apology affidavit filed by Patanjali and directed the company to file a fresh one by the next hearing date.