Even as utter confusion prevails among the state drug authorities in the country on whether to go by the directive of the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) or to take cognizance of the successive stay orders of the Madras high court on the FDC issue, the Haryana state drug controller has given his consent to the pharmaceutical companies in the state to manufacture and market all the contentious 294 FDC drugs.

According to Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industries (CIPI) co-chairman PK Gupta, Haryana state drug controller has given the green signal to the pharma companies a few days ago. "The state drug controller has allowed us to resume production and marketing of the 294 FDC drugs in the state till further court orders", Gupta said. "The drug controller's order in this regard in writing will come in a day or two", he added.

The Haryana state drug controllers' decision came at a meeting between the state drug controller RL Sharma and a CIPI delegation led by Gupta on December 11. The CIPI delegation submitted copies of the Madras high court stay orders to Sharma after which he informed his decision allowing the pharma companies to resume production of the contentious drugs.

The Haryana state drug controller's decision is in contrast to his counterparts in other states as they are either looking forward to the DCGI for further direction or are sitting silent on the issue. None of them has so far shown the audacity to give the go-ahead to the pharma companies to resume production of the 294 contentious FDC drugs against which the DCGI is pulling all stops to weed out them from the market.

The Haryana state drug controller's action will have a cascading effect as the drug controllers in other states are likely to follow his footsteps and might give the green signal to the manufacturers to resume production of the FDC drugs against which the state drug authorities had issued notices for withdrawing cancellation.