The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Ministry of Ayush's July 1 notification omitting Rule 170 of the Drugs and Cosmetic Rules 1945. Rule 170 prohibits advertisements of Ayurveda, Siddha or Unani drugs without approval.
"In our opinion, the aforesaid notification flies in the face of the order passed by this court on May 7," said a two-judge bench of the top court led by Justice Hima Kohli and including Sandeep Mehta.
Dr Babu KV, an RTI activist who pursued the case against Ramdev and Patanjali for alleged misleading advertisements, hailed the SC order. "I have been requesting the Ministry of Ayush not to omit the provision since we have an effective law to curb misleading ads in our country, so the SC's order is a good one," Dr Babu told The New Indian Express.
On Tuesday, during the course of the hearing, the Supreme Court also expressed dissatisfaction and displeasure with the "minuscule" font size of the apology published by the President of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in newspapers after the court had asked him to apologise for giving interviews to the press criticising the top court.
"We can't read it. It is less than 0.1 m," Justice Kohli said after examining digital copies of the apologies published by Dr. Asokan in a section of newspapers.
Earlier, on the last date of hearing, the SC expressed its displeasure over the IMA President Dr R V Asokan tendering his apology only to the IMA's e-newspaper and a news agency.
The apology tendered by the IMA President was in relation to his remarks against the court in an interview.
Saying he was "inviting more trouble" for himself, the apex court added, "The apology has to be published in all the newspapers which carried his interview. The same (apology) has to be done using his own funds and not the funds of the IMA."
Senior advocate PS Patwalia appearing for the IMA said that Dr Asokan would take appropriate steps to purge himself of the contempt of court charges.
The top court was hearing a case filed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), which alleged that Patanjali Ayurveda's advertisements, claiming to cure certain diseases including blood pressure, diabetes and asthma, were speading misinformation. "It is completely wrong to advertise on such kind of diseases," the IMA said.
In its earlier order on February 27, the apex court had restrained Patanjali from advertising or branding products manufactured and marketed by it that are meant to address ailments/diseases/conditions mentioned under the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954 and the Rules.
On August 13, the SC, in a major relief to popular yoga guru Baba Ramdev and his associate and Patanjali's Managing Director Acharya BalKrishna, ordered closure of the contempt case against them in the misleading advertisements case.
The apex court passed the order closing the contempt case and all the proceedings after Ramdev and Balakrishna gave it an undertaking to stop issuing misleading ads and other claims regarding Patanjali products.