ASCI conducts Extraordinary General Meeting to discuss key changes

The industry body can now invite non-ASCI members to be a part of the board's deliberations to ensure transparency in its functioning

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | January 19, 2017

A few major decisions were made at the Advertising Standards Council of India's (ASCI) Extraordinary General Meeting held on January 12, including changes in the Memorandum of Association (MoA) and Article of Association (AoA).

The AoA was amended by the ASCI board to invite people from the industry who are not necessarily its members to participate in its activities as invited members. It is for the first time that ASCI will open the doors for outsiders (non-ASCI members) to come and see the deliberations. The invitee members can be senior industry members. In the last meeting, ASCI decided to call three additional invited members to the board.

Srinivasan K Swamy

Commenting on the amendment, Srinivasan K Swamy, Chairman, ASCI, said, “We want to be seen as a transparent organisation. To our mind it is a big step because if somebody feels that we are not transparent then we need a person inside to see the working of ASCI and see how transparent we are, how our deliberations are democratic. We want people to know that the board does not have any influence over the Consumer Complaints Council's decision.”

MoA was amended to highlight the fact that ASCI is a consumer-centric organisation. “We believe that we are consumer centric, the words 'consumer centric' were not embedded in the constitution. Therefore, we wanted to make sure that our constitution recognises ASCI as a consumer-centric organisation. Consumer is the core of whatever we do because whatever we do is in the interest of consumers,” said Swamy.

A few tweaks were made in the guidelines to make way for donations from the corporate world. Swamy added, “We also want to take the advantage of all the CSR (corporate social responsibility) activities that are available and ASCI wants to be the biggest beneficiary of the CSR of the biggest corporates.”

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