Red & White ad: SC rules in favour of Godfrey

Supreme Court has allowed the appeal of Godfrey Phillips India and set aside the order of the National Consumer Commission, which asked the tobacco company to issue a corrective advertisement to dispel misconceptions created by its original advertisement.

The original ad showed Akshay Kumar holding a cigarette with the slogan, "Red & White smokers are one of a kind." On a public interest petition, the National Consumer Commission ruled that the slogan indicated that smokers could be super actors performing stunts without duplicates. It detracted the attention of the smokers from the statutory warning about the hazards of smoking. Holding this to be an unfair trade practice, the commission directed the company to issue a corrective ad with equal prominence.

The Supreme Court said the Commission had no power to ask the company to issue a corrective ad as this power was given to the consumer courts only through a 2003 amendment to the Consumer Protection Act. Moreover, the petitioner has not proved the damage it caused, and he himself admitted that he was a smoker.

The judgment, delivered by a bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat, also noted that the Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act has come into force, which was a comprehensive law in the field.