Delhi HC questions Patanjali ad calling rival Chyawanprash brands 'dhoka'

Delhi HC flags Patanjali ad calling rival Chyawanprash brands "dhoka", says comparative claims are fine but disparaging others may amount to misrepresentation

The Delhi High Court on Thursday objected to the use of word dhokha (fraud) in a commercial being run by Patanjali Ayurved in which the Ramdev-led firm claimed that all Chyawanprash products, except its own, were dhokha.

 

Hearing a petition filed by FMCG major Dabur India, which sought an interim injunction against the advertisement, Justice Tejas Karia observed that while a company was free to claim its product were superior to others, describing competitors’ products dhokha could be disparagement.

 

The court reserved its order after hearing both sides.

 

Dabur has objected to a 25-second Patanjali advertisement titled “51 herbs. 1 truth. Patanjali Chyawanprash!”

   

In the commercial, a woman is seen telling her child chalo dhokja khao, followed by Baba Ramdev saying that most people were being deceived in the name of Chyawanprash.

 

Appearing for Dabur, senior advocate Sandeep Sethi argued that the commercial was clearly disparaging as Dabur holds over 60 per cent of the Chyawanprash market.

 

Sethi said that by suggesting all other Chyawanprash brands were dhokha, Patanjali had maligned an entire category of licensed ayurvedic products manufactured under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

 

“The defendants have branded every other Chyawanprash manufacturer as deceptive. If they had a specific grievance, they should have named the company,” Sethi said, adding that such statements, coming from a self-styled yoga guru, could mislead consumers.

 

He noted that the advertisement had already garnered over 90 million views in less than a week.

 

Representing Patanjali, senior advocate Rajiv Nayar defended the commercial as a form of permissible puffery, arguing that dhokha was merely a creative expression implying that Patanjali’s product was superior, not that others were fake or spurious.

 

“All I am saying is that our Chyawanprash is more effective, while others are ordinary,” he said.

 

Justice Karia, however, pointed out that the word dhokha carries a negative connotation.

 

“You can call others ordinary or inferior, but calling them dhokha is different. It implies fraud,” the judge remarked. He said while comparative advertising is permissible, crossing into disparagement is not.

 

Earlier, a single-judge bench had partly restrained Patanjali from using certain phrases in its previous advertisement such as “Why settle for ordinary Chyawanprash made with 40 herbs?”

 

This decision was later modified by a division bench, which directed the company to remove that specific reference.