This article is for owners and marketing leads of Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and integrative clinics in India who already know the headline rule, that you cannot promise to cure serious diseases, and now need wording they can actually publish. It assumes you have read the basics of the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act and focuses on drafting: how to describe a therapy, a formulation or a programme so the page stays defensible.
We are a marketing team, not a law firm. Everything below is a drafting approach to put in front of your counsel and your clinical head, not a legal opinion. The sections of the Act you need are quoted below, and our wider Ayurveda marketing guide covers channels and content planning.
The legal frame in four lines
Three provisions of the 1954 Act matter most for AYUSH copy:
- Section 3 bars advertisements that refer to a drug in terms that suggest, or are calculated to lead to, its use for conditions in the Schedule, for sexual capacity, for contraception or abortion, or for menstrual correction.
- Section 4 bars drug advertisements that are false or materially misleading.
- Section 5 bars advertising "magic remedies" (charms, talismans, mantras said to heal) as effective for those purposes.
"Drug" in the Act is wide enough to reach an Ayurvedic formulation, an oil, a churna or a tablet. The test in section 3 is about the effect on the reader. A page that never says "cure" can still fail if the structure of the page leads a diabetic patient to buy a named product for diabetes.
What changed on Rule 170, and what did not
Ayush advertising has an extra layer. Rule 170 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 required state licensing authority clearance before Ayurvedic, Siddha or Unani drugs were advertised. It has been contested for years. The Supreme Court Observer's timeline records that the Ayush ministry put it on hold in 2023 and that, on 7 May 2024, the Union government told the Court it no longer supported the rule.
The ministry then notified its omission on 1 July 2024. The Court stayed that notification on 27 August 2024, and on 11 August 2025 vacated the stay and disposed of the petition, leaving aggrieved persons free to challenge the omission before an appropriate forum, as LiveLaw reported. The same report records the Court's earlier direction of 26 March 2025 that states implement the 1954 Act, with enforcement officers and grievance mechanisms.
What that means in practice: do not plan on a pre-approval step that may or may not be enforced in your state, and do not read the omission of Rule 170 as relaxing the 1954 Act. The Act is the live instrument, and states have been told to enforce it. Ask counsel what your state licensing authority currently expects.
Other rules that sit on top
The Act is one layer. Our overview of what you can say in healthcare ads, and where the privacy rules come in covers the rest at a general level. Three layers matter most for Ayush brands.
ASCI Code. Chapter I, clause 5 of the ASCI Code asks for "special care and restraint" in advertising aimed at people concerned about weakness, perceived physical inadequacy, obesity, illness, impotence, infertility or baldness, and says claims must not go beyond prudent, generally accepted medical practice or the product's actual efficacy. Those are exactly the audiences many Ayush brands target.
Health influencers. ASCI's guidelines page carries Addendum II on health and financial influencers, dated 6 March 2025. For posts on health and nutrition, the influencer must hold relevant qualifications such as a medical degree, disclose them prominently, and be able to prove them to ASCI on request. A wellness influencer reviewing your formulation without such a qualification creates exposure for you as well as for them.
Your own council. The NMC notice of 6 October 2026 binds registered medical practitioners under the NMC Act. Practitioners of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani are regulated under their own statutory bodies. We have not reviewed their advertising rules for this article, so check the conduct regulations of the council you are registered with. The NMC notice does list "ethical parity across all systems of medicine" among its objectives, which is a reason to expect similar scrutiny, as the notice itself states.
A drafting method: separate what you can say from what you can show
Most defensible Ayush copy comes from separating four kinds of statement and labelling each honestly.
1. Description of the practice. What the therapy is, what a session involves, how long it takes, who performs it, what the patient will experience. This is factual and usually low risk. "Abhyanga is a full-body oil massage performed by two therapists" is a description.
2. Description of the tradition. What classical texts say or how the practice has traditionally been used. Attribute it to the source and tense it as tradition, not as clinical proof. A sentence such as "classical Ayurvedic texts describe this therapy in the context of ..." is a statement about texts. It stays defensible only if the page does not then slide into "so it will treat your condition".
3. Description of the evidence. Only where a published study exists, name the study, the population, the design and the limits. Do not generalise from a small trial, an animal study or a laboratory result to patient outcomes.
4. Description of the service offer. Consultation, assessment, fees, location, doctor's name and registration. This is where the call to action lives.
The common failure is to let statement 2 carry the weight of statement 3. "Time-tested for centuries" is a statement about tradition used as if it were proof of effect, and it will not survive a substantiation request from ASCI or a state officer.
