New Delhi, Jan. 20: The Union ministry for traditional systems of medicine is set to partner with India's advertising industry watchdog to curb false or misleading claims about ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homeopathy (Ayush), and punish violators.

The Ayush ministry will under an agreement signed today receive alerts from the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) about unsubstantiated claims in ads related to Ayush products and relay them to state authorities for action.

The ASCI, which mainly relies on consumer complaints to scrutinise advertised claims, will under the pact also scan over 500 television channels and over 900 print publications, including many in regional languages, to look for health-related claims on Ayush products, officials said.

"Healthcare accounts for a large proportion of misleading advertisements and among these, many make claims about Ayush products," Shweta Purandare, the ASCI's secretary-general, said. "This agreement will strengthen what we're already doing - with government intervention."

The pact comes amid efforts by the Ayush ministry and other government departments to encourage research on traditional systems of medicine to establish the scientific validity of various healthcare claims, but in the backdrop of unsubstantiated claims made through advertisements.

The ASCI's Consumer Complaints Council has for over five years released every month lists of ads with claims labelled "false", "misleading", or "nor adequately or scientifically substantiated". But, officials concede that these ASCI lists by themselves have virtually no deterrent effects.

The officials say many of the unsubstantiated advertisements also violate the country's Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, which prohibits claims related to the cure, treatment, or prevention of a set of 56 diseases, including diabetes, cancer, asthma and obesity, among others.

"We're aware there are many unsubstantiated claims - when the industry body alerts us, we'll write to the state licensing authorities that can take action against the companies making the claims under appropriate laws," an adviser in the Ayush ministry said.

The ad council's scrutiny of consumer complaints in October 2016 has listed 37 "misleading" advertisements in the healthcare segment, among which 15 promote Ayush-related products claiming therapeutic effects against diabetes, obesity, joint pains, among other health disorders.

But while the ASCI lists out unsubstantiated claims made primarily by private companies or healthcare institutions, some scientists point out that government laboratories engaged in research on traditional medicine have also not pursued research with the required rigour.

Bhushan Patwardhan, director of the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at Savitribai Phule Pune University, had pointed out last year two examples of what appeared to be claims by government laboratories without adequate evidence of scientific studies to back those claims.

The National Botanical Research Institute and the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants had about two years ago announced an anti-herbal drug called BGR34, and the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences had last year announced commercialisation of Ayush32, another anti-diabetic preparation.

Patwardhan had, in a commentary published in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine, expressed concern that there were no records of clinical trials on either of these two products.

"Instead of publishing in credible scientific journals, the research councils preferred to create headlines in popular print and electronic media," Patwardhan wrote in his commentary. "This is certainly worrying and calls for serious introspection."