NEW DELHI: The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has issued notices to several coaching centers that prepare students for engineering and medical entrance examinations due to misleading claims and unfair trade practices.
After the recent announcement of results for exams like IIT-JEE and NEET, the CCPA found that these coaching centers are not following guidelines designed to prevent misleading advertisements. This behavior promotes their services through deceptive or unfair practices within the coaching sector.
These coaching institutes' advertisements violated provisions of the Act, including Sections 2(28) and 2 (47) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisement in the Coaching Sector, 2024.
Considering the Act's and the Guidelines' violation, CCPA recently issued notices to a few coaching institutes that made exaggerated claims, including guaranteed placement or selection and assurance of rank in JEE or NEET.
Further, it also pointed out unfair trade practices, including promised services not provided, admission canceled but fee not refunded, deficiency in service, and non/partial refund of fees.
The CCPA has advised coaching centres to strictly adhere to the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and Guidelines for the Prevention of Misleading Advertisements in the Coaching Sector, 2024.
Over the past three years, the CCPA has taken action against misleading advertisements, unfair trade practices, and violations of consumer rights by coaching centres to protect consumer rights and ensure transparency in the coaching sector.
In this regard, the CCPA has issued 49 notices and imposed a total penalty of Rs 77.60 lakhs on 24 coaching centres and directed them to discontinue misleading advertisements and unfair trade practices.
CCPA had earlier taken action against coaching centres offering services for competitive exams, including UPSC CSE, IIT-JEE, NEET, RBI, NABARD, among others, reaffirming its commitment to ensuring that no false or misleading advertisements are made in contravention of the Act.
Last year, It has imposed a penalty of Rs 7 lakh each on Vajirao and Reddy and StudyIQ IAS and Rs 1 lakh on Edge IAS for misleading advertisement claims regarding the results of the UPSC CSE 2022 & 2023, respectively.