The Karnataka High Court declared the National Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 was arbitrary, unreasonable and violated the Constitution and the Essential Services Act in so far as to the extent of price control mechanism adopted to determine under price control applicable to essential and life saving drugs.

Chief Justice of Karnataka N K Jain and Justice V G Sabhahit today delivered the judgement on a writ petition filed by Lt. Col. K S Gopinath and Dr. B V Bhaskar from Bangalore who challenged the legality of the Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 published on February 15, 2002.

The petitioners contended the Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 had been framed like a business policy and if it were allowed to enforce it would take away the essential and life saving drugs out of the ambit of the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) which was highly detrimental to public interest on a detailed consideration of rival contention.

The bench held that it found the impugned Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 was arbitrary arbitrary, unreasonable and violated the Constitution and the Essential Services Act of 1995 Article 14 L and 21 of the Constitution only to the extent of price control mechanism adopted in policy to determine drug under price control as it defeats the entire purpose of equitable distribution available of essential drugs in the basket of drugs in the impugned policy.

Accordingly, the High Court directed the respondents including National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to consider an formulate the appropriate criteria so as to ensure that the essential and life saving drugs do not fall out of price control.

It was further directed to review drugs, which are essential and life saving in nature in consultation with the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Until the list of such drugs is prepared and brought into the essential and life saving drugs, the respondents were directed not to implement the impugned the Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 in so far as it is related to essential and life saving drugs for formulation of price control mechanism.