‘New Low in Ads’: FIITJEE Slammed For Mocking Ex-student Who Left It For Another Institute

Coaching institute FIITJEE attracted heavy criticism from social media on Sunday for hitting a new low. The JEE institute was criticised for its latest advertisement in which it used a student’s image and said that her performance declined after she left the institute and joined another. The institute, which prepares students for engineering entrance, was further seen using inflammatory language for its competitor wth words like “evil.”

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 with a history of suicides”.

The incident came to light after Indian Revenue Service officer, Katyayani Sanjay Bhatia, took to X and shared a photo of the ad on social media. “A new low in advertisements @fiitjee. You are posting a picture of a child saying she performed badly because she left your institute! I have blurred the picture because I don’t believe in this disgusting way of claiming your superiority by belittling a girl child,” the IRS officer tweeted.

In a subsequent post, Bhatia wrote, “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? And claiming superiority by claiming that she would have performed had she been in your institute? Shameful.”

In a series of tweets, Bhatia slammed the ongoing ruthless competition among coaching institutes and termed FIITJEE’s advertisement “shameful” as it tried to claim “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”.

The IRS officer further tagged the Ministry of Education, Union Minister Smriti Irani and the Ministry of Women and Child Development to take note of such advertising malpractices. “Such advertising malpractices need to be checked – no institute has the right to shame students to claim its superiority.”