Coaching academy slapped ~5 lakh fine over misleading ads

New Delhi, September 1

The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on Sunday imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakh on Shankar IAS Academy for disseminating misleading advertisements related to the UPSC Civil Service Examination (CSE) 2022.

The order was issued by CCPA Chief Commissioner Nidhi Khare and Commissioner Anupam Mishra.

The CCPA’s investigation into the academy’s advertisements revealed that the academy made exaggerated claims about their students’ success.

Shankar IAS Academy is headquartered in Chennai with its branches across the country. It also has a branch in Delhi on Pusa Road.

The advertisements read — “336 selections out of 933 at All-India Level”, “40 candidates in Top 100”, “42 candidates have cleared from Tamil Nadu, of which 37 studied at Shankar IAS Academy” and “Best IAS Academy in India”.

However, the CCPA found that the academy failed to disclose critical information regarding the nature of the courses these successful candidates had enrolled in.

Instead of being full-time students, many of these candidates had only participated in short-term programmes or free guidance sessions offered by the academy.

Specifically, out of the claimed 336 successful candidates, 221 had taken the ‘Free Interview Guidance Programme’, while only a handful had opted for more extensive paid courses.

Consumers were falsely made to believe that the academy’s paid courses were directly responsible for the high success rate, a practice that the CCPA identified as misleading.

The CCPA’s action is based on the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, particularly Section 18, which empowers the authority to ensure that no false or misleading advertisements are made in respect of any goods or services.

The act of concealing important information about the courses taken by successful candidates was found to violate Section 2(28)(iv) of the Act, which defines misleading advertisements as those that deliberately conceal important facts. In its defence, Shankar IAS Academy could only provide details for 333 successful candidates, falling short of its advertised claims.

Further, the academy included 18 candidates in its success tally who had enrolled in a preliminary course after the UPSC CSE 2022 exams had already concluded, raising further questions about the accuracy of its claims.

The CCPA observed that same successful candidates were claimed by several coaching institutes without disclosing the courses opted by such candidates and length of the course so attended to mislead prospective aspirants.