The Central Consumer Protection Authority has imposed a penalty of Rs 7 lakh on Vajiram Study Center and Ravi IAS for publishing misleading advertisements, which claimed credit for candidates who had cleared the UPSC Civil Services Examination 2023, most of whom had only enrolled in the free interview guidance programme.The regulatory body found that a majority of the candidates mentioned in the institute’s advertisements had only registered for the free Interview Guidance Program (IGP), a short-duration course that begins only after candidates have already passed Prelims and Mains themselves.The institute had claimed on its official website, soon after the results were announced, that “8 rank holders in the top 10” and “37 rank holders in the top 50” are from Vajiram and Ravi.The regulatory body said in a statement that it had also confirmed that “every year, more than 30 per cent of the officers selected through the UPSC civil services examination are students of Vajiram and Ravi.”The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), headed by Principal Commissioner Nidhi Khare and Commissioner Anupam Mishra, found that 7 out of 8 of the top 10 rankers mentioned in the advertisement, and 29 out of 37 of the top 50 rankers, had enrolled only in the free IGP programme, a fact which the institute did not disclose.
The concealment was not limited to 2023. The data examined by the CCPA revealed a consistent pattern of non-disclosure over several years.In 2021, 86.36 per cent of the institute’s successful candidates had only enrolled in the IGP programme; In 2022, the number reached 78.31 percent; In 2023, it rose sharply to 97.56 percent; In 2024, the percentage reached 71.69 percent. This information was not disclosed in any of these years on the institute’s official website.The CCPA pointed out that IGP is a short-term program that commences only after the candidate independently clears the preliminary and main phases of UPSC CSE, which are highly competitive phases in which the institute has had no academic contribution whatsoever.By prominently featuring these candidates alongside advertisements for comprehensive paid training programmes, without any disclosure of the specific course chosen, the Institute created a misleading impression that these candidates were the product of full training.The authority held that failure to disclose the specific courses chosen by successful candidates, whether full-semester programmes, optional subject training, test series or a free interview guidance programme, amounted to misleading advertising under the Consumer Protection Act 2019.This behavior was found to fall directly within Article 2(28)(4) of the law, which prohibits the intentional concealment of important information, and was also considered to violate Article 2(9), which guarantees consumers the right to obtain information.The order against Vajiram and Ravi is part of a broader regulatory offensive against the coaching sector.The CCPA has so far issued more than 60 notices to coaching institutes for misleading advertisements and unfair trade practices, and imposed cumulative penalties of over Rs 1.46 lakh crore on institutes offering coaching for exams, including UPSC CSE, IIT-JEE, NEET, RBI, among others.
