The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is learnt to carrying out the valuation of bids from the private partners to run the six new National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPERs) which are running under the mentor institutions now.

"The department is examining the expression of interests (EoIs) from the likely partners and the process is expected to be over in a couple of weeks now. The further steps will be initiated after short listing the bidders, so that the NIPERs can be made fully autonomous at the earliest," sources in the department said, without specifying the number of interested bidders and other details in this regard. The department will seek request for quotation or request for proposal from the short listed bidders.

Besides, the department is also planning to launch new short term courses in the new NIPERs as per the detailed project report submitted by the consultant firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt Ltd. Courses like those on intellectual property rights concerning the pharma industry, short term courses for the employees of the pharma companies, course on emerging sectors like biopharma are being planned in these institutes.

The new NIPERs, set up at Hajipur in Bihar, Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata in West Bengal and Guwahati in Assam, are currently run with the help of mentor institutes already existing in these places. The government is planning to convert them into independent institutes on a full scale basis under the public private partnership model, as suggested by the detailed project report.

Each NIPER will require about Rs 330 crore including the share from the private partners. The government has already drawn up the detailed plans of the proposed collaboration. The projects are expected to be completed in three phases. As per the detailed report, four types of collaboration opportunities have been designed and the interested bidders will be given choice to choose any of these four models.