Airtel pulled up for its false and misleading advertisements by the Delhi High Court

The Delhi High court passed an order against Airtel for airing and propagating misleading and false advertisements. The company has recently launched a complete 360-degree advertisement campaign claiming to offer the T20 IPL matches ‘free’ and ‘live’ and is only available to Airtel subscribers.

The Hon’ble Delhi High Court has directed Airtel to modify these advertisements to clearly mention that what is free is merely limited to a subscription to Hotstar app to its subscribers. Moreover, the Court has directed that the advertisement should prominently state that data download charges will apply as per subscription plan. Airtel has been directed to implement these changes with immediate effect to avoid misleading subscribers further.

The Delhi High Court passed this order upon an application by Reliance Jio pointing out the misleading information in the Airtel advertisement. The Court’s order is a stern reprimand to Airtel for issuing misleading advertisements to the detriment of the unsuspecting subscribers.

Furthermore, Airtel has also conveniently discounted the fact that Jio already has this feature for the past 1.5 years ever since they launched their services.

No stranger to such ‘misadventures’, Airtel has been pulled up by the Advertising Standards Council of India in the recent past too, notably for issuing misleading advertisements claiming it offered the fastest speeds based on a speed test campaign by Ookla and another advertisement that claimed it was the ‘fastest ever network’.