An IRS officer has criticised the coaching institute FIITJEE for its advertisement which stated that the performance of a girl student declined after she left the institute and joined another.
The advertisement by FIITJEE, placed on the front page of a newspaper, said that the ex-student could have secured a 100 NTA score in JEE-Mains 2024 and not 99.99 if she remained with them and not shifted to an “EVIL Institute from Kota (now in Delhi) with a history of suicides”.
Posting the picture of the advertisement on X, IRS officer Katyayani Sanjay Bhatia tagged Fiitjee and wrote, ‘A new low in advertisements.’ You are posting the picture of a child saying that she performed badly because she left your institute!” She slammed FIITJEE and said it was “disgusting” that the coaching institute was “claiming superiority by belittling a girl child”.
Bhatia also said it was’shameful’ that FIITJEE was claiming superiority by talking about the institute with a ‘history of suicides’. She added that it was a cheap tactic for FIITJEE to use such terms when suicides in Kota are an issue that concerns all.
She also said that the coaching institute was shaming students for not performing. “We talk about parents putting pressure on kids for IIT JEE, but what about this manner of advertising where you shame a student for not performing?” she wrote on X.
The IRS officer said the advertisement puts ‘undue pressure on students’ and asked the Education Ministry and Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, to take note.
“Such advertising malpractices need to be checked-no institute has the right to shame students to claim its superiority,” wrote Bhatia.
In the advertisement, FIITJEE traced the history of the student’s performance while she was at the institute and said, “her 80% of JEE Main & Advanced course was already over when her parents were lured by this EVIL institute”.
It also said the student would have scored 99.99 even if she had studied on her own, so “the contribution of the EVIL institute in her performance is -ve” and that had she remained with FIITJEE, she could have gotten a 100 NTA score.
Since being shared, the ad has caught the attention of the internet and many users called the ad “staggeringly insensitive.”
A user wrote, “The girl and her parents should sue them for criminal harassment and defamation. Mere withdrawal of the ad or an insincere apology ain’t enough.”
Another user commented, “I have respect for Fiitjee due to their teachers but This is horrible advertising!Don’t know how this was approved in the first place that too, on the first page of a national newspaper.”
“This is horrible! @fiitjee, please remove this advertisement from all places & issue a public apology to the general public, specifically to the girl. Any activist lawyer if seeing this comment, please initiate legal proceedings against this institute if possible,” the third user wrote.
