FSSAI can regulate labels, not skip the hearing: what Delhi HC's Dabur stay actually says

Delhi HC stayed FSSAI's "100 per cent" ban on Dabur solely on procedural grounds, no hearing was given before the prohibition. The court hasn't ruled on the claims themselves, or on Dabur's separate challenge to FSSAI's statutory authority under Section 18.

By Mahima Katal New Delhi, Aug 7: The Delhi High Court's decision to stay FSSAI's prohibition order against Dabur is, on its face, a narrow interim relief confined to one company and eight product lines. Read against the last fortnight of regulatory activity, it is the first judicial checkpoint on an enforcement drive that has, until now, moved almost entirely unchecked through show-cause notices, social media disclosures and compliance ultimatums.

Justice Amit Mahajan's order on August 7 turned on a single, procedurally elementary point. FSSAI's Designated Officer had, on August 3, directed Dabur to immediately stop selling honey, apple cider vinegar, virgin coconut oil, sesame oil, cow ghee and other products carrying "100 per cent" claims, without first issuing a show-cause notice or affording a hearing. The court's reasoning did not engage with whether the claims were in fact misleading under the Food Safety and Standards (Advertising and Claims) Regulations, 2018. It engaged only with whether the regulator was entitled to reach a prohibitory order without observing audi alteram partem first. On that narrower question, the bench found a prima facie case for Dabur, noting that a company selling these products for decades could not be shut out "suddenly" without being heard.

Dabur's petition goes further than the natural-justice argument that persuaded the court to grant interim relief. It contests the statutory basis for the order itself, arguing that Section 18 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 sets out general principles to guide food authorities rather than a freestanding power for a Designated Officer to prohibit the sale of a compliant, licensed product. It also notes, pointedly, that FSSAI has not alleged the products are unsafe, adulterated or sub-standard: the dispute is confined to labelling language, not food safety in the Act's core sense. Whether these arguments succeed will be decided at the next hearing. What they signal, regardless of outcome, is that FSSAI's expanding claims-enforcement architecture is now colliding with the procedural constraints that apply to any exercise of statutory power.

That collision was already visible before Dabur moved court. In the last two weeks, United Spirits and Associated Alcohol & Breweries approached the Bombay and Madhya Pradesh High Courts respectively, challenging FSSAI notices over flavouring-related labelling on brands including McDowell's No. 1 and Royal Challenge. INBREW Beverages was named in the same round of notices. The pattern across these petitions is consistent: companies are not disputing FSSAI's underlying authority to regulate labelling, but the manner in which that authority has been exercised orders issued without reasoned findings, publicised before adjudication, and enforced through informal pressure on retailers and platforms rather than through the Act's own procedural sequence.

This is the context in which FSSAI's broader claims crackdown spanning "no added sugar" disputes with The Whole Truth, the "Heart Pro" branding on Marico's Saffola oil, the energy-drink relabelling standoff that PepsiCo has already complied with, and now the "100 per cent" prohibition on Dabur should be read. The regulator's expanded digital enforcement infrastructure, including FoSCoS for compliance tracking and the newer ePAAS system for claims approval, reflects a genuine shift from advisory to punitive posture, one that industry has broadly accepted as overdue given the scale of India's health-food market. The legal vulnerability is not in that shift itself, but in the procedural shortcuts some Designated Officers appear to have taken in implementing it, announcing prohibitions before hearings, and treating a claims dispute as though it required the same immediacy as a contamination recall.

The Dabur stay does not resolve that tension; it defers it by two weeks. But it puts FSSAI on notice, in the most literal sense, that its enforcement architecture cannot outrun the statute it is enforced under. For a regulator moving from selective advisories to systemic, publicised prohibitions, the more consequential story over the coming months may not be which claims survive scrutiny, but whether FSSAI recalibrates its process to survive judicial review.