The Delhi High Court on Friday pulled up yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved for challenging a single-judge order in July that restrained it from running allegedly disparaging advertisements about a product manufactured by consumer goods company Dabur, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla told Patanjali Ayurved to either withdraw the petition or face costs. It also noted that the July 3 order did not direct the conglomerate to take down the entire advertisement but to modify certain portions of it.

Advocate Jayant Mehta, representing Patanjali Ayurved, asked the court for time to take instructions on the next course of action.

The matter was listed for September 23.

On July 3, Justice Mini Pushkarna passed the interim order on a petition filed by Dabur, which alleged that Patanjali Ayurved was disparaging its Chyawanprash product by claiming that no other manufacturer had the knowledge to prepare it.

Chyawanprash is an Ayurvedic formulation made from a blend of sugar, honey, ghee, Indian gooseberry jam and several herbs and spices. It is sold as a dietary supplement.

The matter arose after Patanjali Ayurved telecast an advertisement featuring Ramdev, in which he questioned the authenticity of Chyawanprash products sold by other companies.

In its petition, Dabur objected to references in the advertisements that described a “40-herb” Chyawanprash as “ordinary”. This was a reference to Dabur’s product that advertised itself as using “40+ herbs”, it alleged.

Dabur also noted that it was misleading and harmful to label other brands as “ordinary”.

The petition alleged that such statements misrepresented Patanjali Ayurved’s own formulation, questioned Dabur’s adherence to Ayurvedic tradition and branded Dabur’s product as inferior.

The advertisements undermined confidence in a category of products governed by strict regulatory standards, the petition said. The advertisements also made “untrue” claims that other manufacturers did not have the knowledge of Ayurvedic texts and the formulae used to prepare Chyawanprash, Dabur added.

The consumer goods company also claimed that Patanjali Ayurved was a habitual offender, citing earlier orders in contempt proceedings against the company for similar advertising conduct.

In her order, Pushkarna held that certain claims in Patanjali Ayurved’s advertisements went beyond permissible commercial puffery, adding that this amounted to disparagement, Bar and Bench reported.

She directed Patanjali Ayurved to delete certain phrases, including “Why settle for ordinary Chyawanprash made with 40 herbs?” from print advertisements.

The order also asked it to remove portions of its television commercial storyboard that suggested that only those with Ayurvedic knowledge could prepare “original Chyawanprash”, according to Bar and Bench.

The judge added that the advertisements would be permitted to continue only after making such edits.

Subsequently, Patanjali Ayurved filed a petition challenging the single-bench order before the court’s commercial appellate division, Bar and Bench reported. The petition claimed that the July 3 order violated established principles on commercial speech.

In April, the court had ordered Ramdev to take down advertisements in which he claimed that food company Hamdard’s drink Rooh Afza was being used to orchestrate “sharbat jihad”.

In May, a day after the court warned Ramdev of contempt proceedings for publishing a new video allegedly targeting Hamdard, the yoga guru said that he will not make statements or publish social media posts targeting Rooh Afza.

Also read: A brief history of Patanjali’s dangerous claims

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