The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954, and the 54 conditions you may not advertise a cure for.
One of the seven rule-sets that reach Indian healthcare marketing, and the only one with imprisonment attached. Here is what it says, which conditions it names, and why it covers almost every hospital we work with.
What the Act is, in four questions.
What is the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954?
It is an Indian law that prohibits advertising any drug or remedy as being able to diagnose, cure, mitigate, treat or prevent 54 named conditions, and prohibits advertising that is false or misleading about a drug. It applies to the advertisement, not only to the drug.
What is the punishment?
Section 7 sets it out: on a first conviction, imprisonment of up to six months, or a fine, or both. On a subsequent conviction, imprisonment of up to one year, or a fine, or both.
Does it apply to a hospital website?
The Act governs advertisements referring to drugs and remedies. A hospital page that claims a treatment cures a scheduled condition is making exactly the kind of claim the Act is aimed at. Whether a particular page falls inside it is a legal question, and one worth asking before publishing rather than after.
Is this the law the Supreme Court used against Patanjali?
No, and this is widely misreported. The Supreme Court ran contempt proceedings against Patanjali over an undertaking the company gave the Court in November 2023. The Act was the background to the petition, not the Court’s instrument. Those proceedings closed on 13 August 2024.
Fifty-four conditions. Read the ones in bold.
Section 3 prohibits any advertisement suggesting a drug will diagnose, cure, mitigate, treat or prevent the conditions in the Schedule. This is that list. We have emphasised the ones that describe the service lines Indian hospitals most want to promote.
- Appendicitis
- Arteriosclerosis
- Blindness
- Blood poisoning
- Bright's disease
- Cancer
- Cataract
- Deafness
- Diabetes
- Diseases and disorders of the brain
- Diseases and disorders of the optical system
- Diseases and disorders of the uterus
- Disorders of menstrual flow
- Disorders of the nervous system
- Disorders of the prostatic gland
- Dropsy
- Epilepsy
- Female diseases (in general)
- Fevers (in general)
- Fits
- Form and structure of the female bust
- Gall stones, kidney stones and bladder stones
- Gangrene
- Glaucoma
- Goitre
- Heart diseases
- High/low blood pressure
- Hydrocele
- Hysteria
- Infantile paralysis
- Insanity
- Leprosy
- Leucoderma
- Lockjaw
- Locomotor ataxia
- Lupus
- Nervous debility
- Obesity
- Paralysis
- Plague
- Pleurisy
- Pneumonia
- Rheumatism
- Ruptures
- Sexual impotence
- Smallpox
- Stature of persons
- Sterility in women
- Trachoma
- Tuberculosis
- Tumours
- Typhoid fever
- Ulcers of the gastro-intestinal tract
- Venereal diseases, including syphilis, gonorrhoea, soft chancre, venereal granuloma and lympho granuloma
Cancer. Heart diseases. Diabetes. Obesity. Sterility in women. Disorders of the prostatic gland. Cataract and glaucoma. A cancer centre, a cardiac unit, a diabetes programme, a bariatric surgeon, an IVF clinic and an eye hospital are all working inside this Schedule. It is not an obscure law about quack remedies. It covers the mainstream of Indian private healthcare.
The Act also empowers the Central Government to add conditions by rule, so the Schedule is a floor rather than a ceiling. The list above is the Schedule as enacted.
The sentence that breaks it is almost never the outrageous one.
Nobody writes “we cure cancer”. What gets written is softer and still inside the prohibition:
- “Our protocol has helped thousands overcome diabetes”
- “Permanent relief from heart disease”
- “A proven solution for infertility”
- “Reverse obesity in 90 days”
Each names a scheduled condition and promises an outcome. Each was written by somebody who had never read the Act, and approved by a consultant who assumed somebody had.
What you can say instead is usually stronger, because it is checkable: what the procedure is, who it suits, what the published evidence shows, what your own volumes are, and who performs it. A specific, sourced statement outperforms a superlative with a careful reader — and a careful reader is who you are writing for in healthcare.
This is the argument we make on every account. The rules and good marketing point the same way here. Compliance is not a tax on the work; it is a description of it.
The case everyone cites, cited wrongly.
Across the Indian marketing industry this Act is routinely described as the law the Supreme Court used to discipline Patanjali. It was not.
The proceedings were contempt of court, registered as In Re: Patanjali Ayurved Limited, SMC(C) No. 4 of 2024. Patanjali had given the Court an undertaking in November 2023 to stop advertising claims of the kind the Act prohibits. When such advertisements continued, the Court issued contempt notices, rejected the first apology affidavits as not unconditional, and ordered the managing director and Baba Ramdev to appear in person. The proceedings were closed on 13 August 2024.
We set this out because we got it wrong ourselves, on this website, and published a correction rather than editing it away.
The distinction is not pedantry. What disciplined Patanjali was a promise made to a court. The Act’s own imprisonment provision in Section 7 remains on the books and was not the instrument used. If you are assessing your own exposure, those are two different risks.
- Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954, Sections 3, 5 and 7, and the Schedule. Act text
- Schedule contents as enacted, 54 conditions. Consolidated listing — cross-checked against the Act text above for Section 3’s reference to the Schedule.
- In Re: Patanjali Ayurved Limited, through its Managing Director Acharya Balkrishna, Baba Ramdev, SMC(C) No. 4 of 2024, Supreme Court of India. Contempt proceedings closed, 13 August 2024
This page is not legal advice. It is a marketing practitioner’s reading of published law, written so you know which questions to put to a lawyer. For an actual compliance position on your own material, instruct one.
Scope. This page is marketing and search analysis written by a non-clinician. It contains no medical advice and no clinical guidance. Decisions about tests, treatment and care belong with a registered medical practitioner. Search figures are from Ahrefs, India locale, pulled 21 October 2026; volumes are twelve-month averages carrying normal estimation error.
Every claim on your site, checked against all seven regimes.
It is part of the free audit. We go through your live pages and tell you which sentences we would not publish, and why.