The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) can now impose a penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh on manufacturers, advertisers and endorsers for any misleading advertisements, according to the new guidelines notified by the government today.
For subsequent contraventions, CCPA may impose a penalty of up to Rs 50 lakh. The Authority can also prohibit the celebrities who endorse a misleading advertisement from making any endorsement for up to 1 year and for subsequent contravention, prohibition can extend up to 3 years.
The guidelines also include special provisions for protecting children from misleading ads. A provision has also been introduced so that “disclaimers” are not used to pass off misleading ads with impunity.
CCPA which functions under the administrative control of the Department of Consumer Affairs has notified ‘Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements for Misleading Advertisements, 2022’ with an objective to curb misleading advertisements and protect the consumers, who may be exploited or affected by such advertisements.
The guidelines seek to ensure that consumers are not being fooled with unsubstantiated claims, exaggerated promises, misinformation and false claims. Such advertisements violate various rights of consumers such as right to be informed, right to choose and right to be safeguarded against potentially unsafe products and services.
A misleading advertisement has already been defined under section 2(28) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
The present guidelines define “bait advertisement”, “surrogate advertisement” and clearly provide what constitute as “free claim advertisements”.
Special Protection for Children
Keeping in view the sensitiveness and vulnerability of children and severe impact advertisements make on the younger minds, several pre-emptive provisions have been laid down on advertisements targeting children.
The guidelines forbid advertisements from exaggerating the features of product or service in such manner as to lead children to have unrealistic expectations of such product or service and claim any health or nutritional claims or benefits without being adequately and scientifically substantiated by a recognized body.
The guidelines says that advertisements targeting children shall not feature any personalities from the field of sports, music or cinema for products which under any law require a health warning for such advertisement or cannot be purchased by children.
Disclaimers
Disclaimers in advertisements play a pivotal role from consumer perspective since, in a way it limits the responsibility of the company.
Therefore, the guidelines stipulate that disclaimer shall not attempt to hide material information with respect to any claim made in such advertisement, the omission or absence of which is likely to make the advertisement deceptive or conceal its commercial intent and shall not attempt to correct a misleading claim made in an advertisement.
Further, it provides that, a disclaimer shall be in the same language as the claim made in the advertisement and the font used in a disclaimer shall be the same as that used in the claim.
