Shah Rukh Told to Prove the Vimal Elaichi Ad Isn't Tobacco

The Vimal Elaichi ad that put Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff on screen together has now earned all three of them a nine-page show-cause notice from Maharashtra's food safety regulator. The notice, signed by Food Safety Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe and dated August 11, gives the actors 15 days from receipt to explain themselves in writing — and orders them to pull the campaign off their own social media handles in the meantime.

The regulator's argument isn't that cardamom is harmful. It's that "Vimal" is a name Indian shoppers read instantly as pan masala, a category Maharashtra has prohibited. Selling a sweet mouth freshener under that same name, the FDA says, keeps a banned brand alive on television and phone screens without the ad ever mentioning the banned thing itself.

That's worth caring about beyond the film pages. Surrogate advertising is one of those open secrets everyone has trained themselves to ignore — soda that shares a name with whisky, a music label that shares a name with rum, elaichi that shares a name with gutkha. What makes this notice unusual is that the state has gone after the faces in the commercial, not just the company paying for it.

What the Vimal Elaichi Ad Notice Actually Says

The FDA's position is that the campaign, on the face of it, is indirect promotion. It leans on the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, the Advertising and Claims Regulations of 2018 — which require food claims to be truthful and unambiguous, and allow the regulator to demand corrective advertising — and Section 21 of the Consumer Protection Act, which is the provision aimed squarely at endorsers.

The advertisement prima facie amounts to "indirect or surrogate promotion of prohibited pan masala and tobacco-related products", the notice states.

Alongside the written explanation, the three have been told to immediately stop endorsing the product and strip the promotional material from their social handles, websites and any other digital platform where it still sits.

Why a Cardamom Packet Became a Tobacco Question

Maharashtra's prohibition runs under Section 30(2)(a) of the food safety law. The current order, issued on July 13, covers specified tobacco, nicotine and areca-nut based food products and stays in force for one year. That annual expiry is the whole trick of it: the state has kept gutkha and pan masala banned since 2012 by simply re-issuing the order every single year rather than passing anything permanent.

A one-year ban that needs renewing also means the rules can be tightened at renewal. Brand owners, meanwhile, keep the name in circulation through products that are legal to sell — plain elaichi being the obvious one. The regulator is now testing whether that gap is a genuine product line or a loophole with a film star standing in it.

What the Three Actors Have to Hand Over

This is the part that turns a headline into actual work for three sets of lawyers. The notice doesn't just ask for an opinion; it asks for a paper trail, and the specificity of the demands suggests the FDA expects to build a case rather than accept an apology.

Contracts, Briefs and What They Were Paid

The actors must produce their endorsement agreements, the campaign briefs they worked from, details of payment arrangements, and the identity of the advertising agency and brand owner. They also have to disclose any material connection between themselves and the advertiser — the same disclosure rule that now governs influencer posts across India.

Proof That the Elaichi Actually Sells on Its Own

The sharpest demand is for documentary evidence that Vimal Elaichi is independently available in the market as a real, separately sold product. If that evidence is thin, the surrogate argument gets much easier to make. It flips the usual burden: the endorser now has to show the thing he advertised exists on shop shelves in its own right.

Where the Ad Ran, and for How Long

The FDA has also asked for media dissemination details — which channels, which platforms, over what period. That matters because reach is what regulators use to size a penalty and to judge how many consumers were plausibly misled.

How Much Can an Endorser Actually Be Fined?

Under the Consumer Protection Act, the Central Consumer Protection Authority can order a misleading ad discontinued or modified and fine an endorser up to Rs 10 lakh for a first contravention, rising to Rs 50 lakh for repeat offences. Against a top star's endorsement income, that's small change. The real teeth sit elsewhere: the authority can bar an endorser from promoting any product for up to a year, and up to three years for repeat violations.

Akshay Kumar Already Walked Away From This Brand

There's precedent, and it's recent. In 2022, Akshay Kumar publicly apologised for appearing in a campaign for the same brand and stepped away from it after sustained criticism. Ajay Devgn, by contrast, has previously defended his association with the category. Foreign stars haven't been spared either — Delhi's government issued a notice to Pierce Brosnan in 2018 over a pan masala endorsement.

Watch the next fortnight. If the three respond by quietly deleting the posts and filing paperwork, this ends as a compliance file. If the state escalates to the consumer authority and seeks an endorsement ban, every celebrity contract in India gets a new clause about surrogate categories. As a viewer, the tell is simple: when an ad spends 30 seconds on a brand name and barely two on the product, ask what's really being sold — and take it to the Central Consumer Protection Authority if you think you were misled.