Confusion prevails over the jurisdiction of the Madras High Court stay orders on Certificate of Pharmaceutical Product (CoPP) on whether the stay is applicable to the approached parties only or the entire country.

In the first stay order dated October 13, 2009, the high court has said that 'notice, interim stay in so far as it relates to the petitioner alone for the period of eight weeks'. Even though the stay is for the petitioner alone, there is a view in the industry that the stay is against the DCGI order in which he has centralized the issuance of CoPP in the entire country. Since the stay order is against the DCGI order, they say it will be applicable to the entire country. The first petition was filed by D I Dileep Kumar, the secretary of the Tamil Nadu Drug Inspectors Association.

Again the Madras high court has granted stay on the same order on October 16, this time the petition was moved by B Sethuraman, chairman of the Federation of South Indian Pharma Manufacturers Association which has members spread across the four states of the South India. Though the order is yet to be received by the parties, the predominant view is that the stay will be applicable to only the four states of its jurisdiction.

Industry as well as the industry is divided over the real jurisdiction of the stay orders. As the parties who have moved the petition have only limited jurisdiction in south India only, the predominant view is that it will be applicable to only in these states.

Meanwhile, the industry does not want to take chances as it gracing up to file another case in the name of Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industries (CIPI) which is an association of thousands of pharma units across the country.