The moves to amicably settle the contentious fixed dose combinations issue outside the court have picked up momentum with the Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industries (CIPI) which had moved the Madras high court constituting a four-member expert panel to negotiate with the authorities, even as the DCGI is meeting industry bodies for consensus.

The committee representing the industry and comprising pharmacologists will sit with renowned pharmacologist Prof Y K Gupta, who has been entrusted by the drug control authorities to scrutinize the drugs, with a view to find a lasting solution to the contentious issue by taking product by product, sources said.

The panel and the authorities have in principle agreed to take the `absurd' and `banned' products one by one and arrive at a final decision on their future. The CIPI, which is also keen to get the issue solved out of the court, has made it clear that it would stand by the decision of the authorities after the scrutiny.

CIPI chairman T Jaishankar, preferring to describe the contentious absurd FDCs rather as `bad', said the panel would first take these drugs and those coming under the category of `needing further examination' would be taken up only later. ``First priority is to decide on these bad products. We are ready to comply with the Government decision, whatever it be, based on this review,'' he told Pharmabiz.

The CIPI had earlier already made a list of around 110 drugs (most of them belonging to the banned, absurd and rejected category) its members are willing to voluntarily withdraw from the market if the DCGI allows them to manufacture and market the rest of the contentious 294 FDC drugs.

As DCGI is also keen to attend the crucial session between the CIPI panel and Prof Gupta, the meeting will be held at the earliest available time convenient to all the parties, it is learnt.

Meanwhile, the DCGI is also formally meeting the industry associations to hammer out a consensus on the matter and settle it for ever. However, it will be more important for him to settle it out first with the CIPI which has to finally withdraw the petition in the high court for a permanent solution.