Question : Misleading Advertisements

(a) the existing mechanism to monitor the misleading advertisements in electronic, print and social media across the country;


(b) the number of cases of misleading advertisements detected by the existing monitoring mechanism along with the present status of such cases;

(c) the number of misleading advertisers punished in the country so far, State/UT-wise;

(d) the role and success achieved by the online portal launched by the Government to curb misleading advertisements in the country;

(e) the role of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) and the details of their evaluation report, if any, on misleading advertisements; and

(f) the other steps taken by the Government to strengthen the existing monitoring mechanism to prevent misleading advertisements in electronic, print as well as social media?

MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, FOREST AND CLIMATE CHANGE; MINISTER OF INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING; AND MINISTER OF HEAVY INDUSTRIES AND PUBLIC ENTERPRISES
(SHRI PRAKASH JAVADEKAR)

(a): All advertisements telecast on private satellite TV channels are regulated in accordance with the Advertising Code prescribed under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.
The Government has constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) to take cognizance suo-moto or look into specific complaints regarding violation of the Programme Code and Advertising Code and make appropriate recommendation for further action by the Government.

Press Council of India (PCI) has framed ''Norms of Journalistic Conduct'' which inter alia covers principles and ethics with regard to advertisements in print media.

Department of Consumer Affairs has a portal “Grievance Against Misleading Advertisements” (GAMA) to handle the complaints relating to misleading advertisements.

(b) to (d): Complaints received on GAMA portal are evaluated by Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory body of Advertisement industry and are processed through its Consumer Complaints Council which deals with advertising content and decide on complaints against advertisements making misleading, false and unsubstantiated claims. Since 2015, 15,268 complaints have been registered on the GAMA Portal. In more than 90% of the advertisements where the complaints are upheld, the advertisers ensure compliance. In case such assurance by way of withdrawing or modifying the advertisement is not done in a time bound manner, ASCI forwards such complaints to the Regulator concerned to take necessary action.

(e): ASCI looks into complaints across all media such as Print, TV, Radio, hoardings, SMS, e-mailers, Internet/ web-site, product packaging, brochures, promotional material and point of sale material etc. Since 2015, out of 15,268 complaints send on GAMA portal 10,798 complaints have been resolved.

(f): The Government periodically monitors its own mechanism for preventing misleading advertisements on various platforms.
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