NEW DELHI: The Centre’s two key ministries and a department, which are tasked with monitoring and regulating misleading advertisements and false claims about food products, have failed to detect any such promotions in the past two years, a series of RTIs have revealed.This is despite the fact that the Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi), a national think tank on nutrition consisting of independent medical experts, paediatricians, and nutritionists, said they have spotted a number of such misleading advertisements on a daily basis in electronic and print media and, of late, social media, too. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which plays a crucial role in regulating and monitoring advertisements, replied in the negative in an RTI reply to a question on which food product ads they have identified as misleading between September 2023 and March 2025 under the Advertising Code (Rule 7) under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995. In its reply, the I&B ministry said that, according to readily available records, no food product advertisements were identified as misleading between September 2023 and March 2025 under the rules, and so the question of taking action “doesn’t arise.”Similarly, the Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution ministry was asked the same question, and their reply was “the required information is not available.”
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