Consumer affairs dept probing plaint against Byju’s over misleading ad: BIS director general

New Delhi [India], April 19 (ANI): The Ministry of Consumer Affairs is conducting an investigation against India’s top edtech company Byju’s for misleading advertisement. It was learnt that the department of consumer affairs under the ministry received a complaint and the matter was under investigation.

Pramod Kumar Tiwari, director general, Bureau of Indian Standards, on Wednesday told ANI, “We received a complaint for misleading advertisement against Byju’s. The complainant has said that Byju’s claims that many of their students cleared the examinations of civil services. The complainant has said that Byju’s claim in the advertisement is a false claim and needs to be investigated. So, I will ask them to respond.”
Tiwari said monitoring misleading advertisement comes under the purview of Central Consumer Protection Authority but the directorate-general BIS (D-G BIS) has been made the D-G Investigation to investigate such cases. “We probe complaints and report to our ministry, which is the department of consumer affairs. We have taken action in many cases.”

BIS on Wednesday also revealed several green standards to address sustainability. According to Tiwari, BIS has made green standards on construction, waste disposal, waste management, electric vehicles, wind turbines, mechanical engineering, agriculture, electrical sector and management systems.

Green standards indicate the environmental attributes or performance of a product or service. They also aim to reduce the negative impact of human activities in the natural environment and promote the efficient use of resources. Such standards could be horizontal and cross-cutting that provide guidance to all types of organisations regardless to their size or location or could be specific.

The director general also clarified that there is no standard of BIS to declare any plastic product as biodegradable.

Tiwari said, “We have told this to the ministry of environment, which is the nodal ministry. This fact has not been established not in our country but anywhere in the world that plastic is completely biodegradable. We have told this to the ministry and have requested the ministry that till we do not get the research findings, we have a problem in doing this kind of certification.”

Giving an update on the gold and bullion hallmarking, Tiwari said hallmarking of gold and bullion is going very successfully.

“It has a very positive impact. The government had listened to all the concerns of jewellers and given some relaxation to those jewellers who were registered before the implementation of mandatory hallmarking and if they have gold stock, they are given three months’ time,” Tiwari said.

The director general added that its biggest positive impact was that gold jewellery pieces which used to be hallmarked three lakh pieces a day on an average.

“After the end of March, that number increased by one million per day,” Tiwari said, adding, “Jewellers have accepted it. The deadline of three months given will end in June.”