5 Jul 2024
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) eased the earlier rule and made it mandatory only for the food and health sectors. However, there is another Supreme Court hearing on July 9th on this matter.
The Supreme Court of India passed an order on May 7th mandating all advertising bodies to issue a Self Declaration Certificate (SDC) for all ads on TV, radio, print, or the internet broadcasted after June 18th. The idea was to crack down on misleading advertising.
Following an uproar and multiple meetings with various industry bodies, MIB issued a fresh directive on July 3rd. Now, the SDC must be issued only for food and health-related ads.
Food and health products and services providers will need to manually upload an annual SDC on the Press Council of India website for print and internet ads and the Broadcast Seva website for TV and radio ads. Proof of uploading will need to be submitted to the concerned media stakeholders, like newspapers and TV channels, for record keeping.
This fresh order relieves media houses from the responsibility of checking and validating the SDCs.