Television advertisements of products such as Fairpro, Ayurvedic Roopamri Fairness Cream, Celebrity Lift, Maha Dhan Lakshmi Yantram, Musli Power Xtra, will go off air following an advisory by the Ministry for Information & Broadcasting.

Advertisements that promote products making unsubstantiated claims like the products that offer magical curing of ailments or ones that promise to save you from evils of black magic or help you lose weight quickly have been luring gullible consumers.

Coming to the aid of such consumers, the Advertisement Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self regulatory body, sought the Ministry’s intervention in asking the TV channels, which air teleshopping ads, to stop promoting such products.

The Ministry’s advisory stated that ASCI brought to its notice that various channels continued carrying certain objectionable ads despite its Consumer Complaints Council finding them in violation of the provisions of code for self-regulation as well as provisions of Drugs & Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954.

This matter was placed before an Inter-Ministerial Committee as well.

Most of the advertisements that the Ministry has mentioned in its advisory note are teleshopping ads related to products that claim to offer skin fairness, magical curing of ailments, black magic yantra, hair-growth, anti-addiction, weight loss, among others.

According to industry estimates, the television home shopping industry is pegged at ₹2,000 crore. Several general entertainment and news channels devote late-night hours to run such ads and which are lucrative and bring additional advertising revenues.

The Ministry’s advisory added that, “advertisements which violate ASCI’s code also are in violation of the advertising code enshrined in Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and Rules 1994.”

It also reiterated that hence ASCI’s decisions are bound for compliance by the advertisers and such ads should not be carried by TV channels.

In a statement, Partha Rakshit, Chairman, ASCI, “We were finding that some advertisers on TV channels, especially Teleshopping Networks, were not complying with the ASCI decisions. We submitted the list to the Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) of the MIB for their consideration…IMC has directed that advertisements found to violate the ASCI code cannot be carried on TV channels.”

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