On the lines of a pending Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking CBI inquiry into the past approvals of contentious fixed dose combination drugs in the State, another PIL is likely to be moved in the Supreme Court with the same demand of probe covering all the States.
Though the Jabalpur Bench of the HC issued notices to the Centre, the DCGI and the State licensing authority of MP asking why the PIL should not be admitted in May, the respondents have not filed replies yet. Industry leader J R Agarwal had moved the petition seeking CBI probe into all the past approvals of FDCs in the State without the clearance of the DCGI office.
He said that he was now planning to move a similar PIL in the Apex Court to demand a probe by the central agency into the approvals of FDCs in all the States and the licensing authorities in all the States will also be respondents. He contented that the SLAs were not legally entitled to approve the FDCs, but sanctioned the same for long in the past without the approval of the DCGI. According to the petitioner, there could be enormous corruption behind the approvals, thus warranting a probe by the central agency.
Referring to the recent settlement of the FDC issue between the industry and the DCGI, Agarwal said his issue was totally different from that. It did not make any difference to his case in the court. He said he was challenging the authority of the SLAs to issue approvals and seeking inquiry into the corruption behind such approvals.
Though the case came up for hearing last month after the recess of the High Court, hearing did not take place as the respondents including the DCGI did not file the affidavits on the admissibility of the PIL.