Admen upset over government move

India's advertising fraternity is concerned about the overriding powers that the draft Broadcasting Services a Regulation Bill, 2007 has envisaged for regulating content of promotional campaigns despite the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) having its own model code of conduct.

"In a meeting with the information and broadcasting ministry officials on June 26, we had expressed our view that when ASCI has a code for self regulation, why should anybody from outside regulate us," an ASCI representative said.

ASCI's unhappiness comes after the government taking a suo motu action to ban two undergarment advertisements "" Lux Cozy and Amul Macho "" claiming them to be indecent, vulgar and suggestive. The advertisements were cleared by the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) of the apex body regulating advertisements in India.

"The CCC had cleared the two advertisements because they were not likely to cause grave and widespread offence," the ASCI representative said.

The Draft Broadcasting Services and Regulation Bill, 2007 has incorporated that it would override the deliberations of ASCI.

"The CCC has 21 members of which 12 are from non-advertising background from different walks of life such as education and social activists and they have been involved in clearing those advertisements," the ASCI official said, adding cleared ads could not have been biased.

Echoing similar sentiments, Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) also said further discussions needed to be held with the industry and government to sort out the issue.

"We are happy that most of the recommendations made by the ASCI have been incorporated in the Bill. Yet, regarding the overriding power, we have been in dialogue with the ministry, let us finish the discussion to know the final result," AAAI President Madhukar Kamath.

He said discussions have been on for last one year and ASCI representatives were explaining the code in detail to the ministry officials.

According to ASCI, self regulation was a worldwide phenomenon and even the advertisers in India should be allowed to regulate themselves without outside control. The official hoped that a clearer picture would emerge in a week's time.