After about three months of its formation, the first formal meeting of the group of ministers (GoM), constituted by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to finalise the much controversial National Pharmaceutical Policy, will be held on April 10 in Delhi under Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar who heads the GoM.

It will be the first formal meeting of the GoM and there is no specific agenda for the meeting. The meeting will broadly take up the pharmaceutical policy draft and there will be no focus on any specific aspect, sources said.

Specific discussions on issues, including several sensitive issues like price control, will be held in the subsequent meetings. Before that, the GoM will invite once again the pharma industry associations to air their views regarding the controversial issues on which there are conflicting views even between the ministerial colleagues of Pawar.

Even though the GoM was constituted about three months back in early January this year, it could not meet so far due to the preoccupation of GoM head Sharad Pawar. Though the formal meeting is to be held on April 10, Pawar is holding informal meetings with various groups before that.

Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, Health Minister Anbumani Ramdoss, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, Law Minister H R Bhardwaj and Deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia are the members of the GoM. The Union Cabinet on January 11 had referred the policy to the GoM, after industry and the Chemicals Ministry took divergent positions on the issue of including more drugs under price control.

The Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Ministry submitted the draft National Pharmaceutical Policy, aimed at ensuring life-saving drugs available at affordable prices, to the Union Government on December 28, 2005 for its implementation. But, the Policy ran into rough weather when the pharma industry took serious exception to several issues in the draft including the price control. Besides, several other Union ministers also took a divergent view on the policy forcing the matter to be left to the discretion of the Prime Minister.

Amid speculations of the industry trying to influence the Prime Minister to change the policy, the Prime Minister constituted the 7-member GoM under Pawar to finalise the policy in January this year.