The country’s consumer protection regulator(CCPA) has imposed a Rs 1 lakh penalty on Rau’s IAS Study Circle and Rs 50,000 on Seekers Education for publishing misleading advertisements. Both the coaching centres have been fined for making claims of high strike rates by their students in competitive examinations.
In an official statement, the consumer affairs ministry said that the central consumer protection authority (CCPA) headed by its chief commissioner Nidhi Khare passed an order against Rau’s IAS Study Circle for claiming in its advertisements that “Hundreds of Rau’s IAS Study Circle students aced the UPSC exam this year as well”.
It was revealed by CCPA that out of 143 aspirants, 111 belonged to the Interview Guidance Programme (IGP). “It was observed by CCPA that, unlike other courses, the IGP Course is not a full-time course. The IGP Course comes into play only after an aspirant has cleared the Prelims examination and the Mains examination of the UPSC CSE. Hence, claiming that an aspirant is a ‘successful student’ of RAU’s IAS Study Circle, in the absence of necessary disclosure with regard to the course opted by the aspirant, constitutes misleading advertisement under the Act,” the statement said.
The coaching centre’s claim can “undeniably” mislead consumers with regard to its actual role in successfully clearing the exam by an aspirant, the CCPA has directed it to pay the fine.
The authority has found that Seekers Education published an advertisement making the claim that ‘Be it online or offline, We are the best’ and ‘99.99% in JEE 2021’ in the Trichy edition of a regional daily in May 2021. But when CCPA examined the matter the company admitted that there is no basis for making the claim of 99.99%. “It was observed that claiming a success ratio of 99.99%, in the absence of any substantiation, misleads consumers,” the statement said.
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