Three Indian ministries collaborate for task force to combat misleading ads

Delhi: According to media reports, three major Indian ministries—the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs—are forming an inter-ministerial taskforce to combat misleading and fraudulent digital advertisements.

Each ministry presently handles different aspects of social media advertising: content regulation, oversight of misleading content and surrogate ads, and governance of social media platforms.

The taskforce is expected to be operational by June. This taskforce will define misleading ads, identify violators, and may draft specific laws for social media ads, currently regulated under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. 

The initiative comes after the Supreme Court required companies to submit self-declarations for all advertisements, following a complaint against Patanjali Ayurved's false medical claims. 

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has raised concerns about the feasibility of this order given the large volume of digital ads.

Manisha Kapoor, CEO and Secretary-General, ASCI, said, "The requirement laid down by the Supreme Court of self-declarations for all advertisements on all media would indeed be a challenging one to implement given the scale and scope of advertisements, particularly on digital. Advertisers will need to incorporate this as part of their media release timelines.  For local and hyper-local channels and press, as well as smaller platforms, the entire information mechanism will need to be incorporated as part of the technology offering. It will also be important to determine what will happen in the case of violations if they should occur despite self-declarations. We will await details from MIB on operationalising this order."