The Himachal Pradesh government has decentralized the state drug department by appointing assistant drug controllers at Baddi, Solan and Daramshala regions of the state. These assistant drug controllers have been vested with manufacturing and sales license issuing powers.

With the appointment of assistant drug controllers in these three different locations of the state, the drug manufacturers in the state do not have to go to the state capital Simla for every work related to manufacturing and sales licensing. They can now approach the assistant drug controller in their respective regions for this purpose. However, the headquarters of the drug department will remain in Simla.

According to industry estimate, there are more than 300 pharma companies in the state, including few big companies like Ranbaxy and Cipla. Though these companies are spread all over the state, the concentration of the pharma companies is in the three regions of Baddi, Solan and Daramshala. Manufacturers in the state said that the appointment of licensing authority in these locations will go a long way in helping the industry. Otherwise, they have to go to Simla for every work and it is not necessary one will find the officers concerned in the office every time. This will save time and money, they said.

Presently, such decentralized licensing system has been introduced by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Control Administration. There are licensing authorities in Maharashtra, wherever there is concentration of the pharma industry like Thane, Aurangabad, Nashik, etc. The Andhra Pradesh drug department is also proposing to decentralize the licensing system for the benefit of the drug manufacturers and marketers.

Himachal Pradesh has witnessed the influx of hundreds of pharma companies from different parts of the country, including far away states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra after the central government announced Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, J&K and Sikkim as excise free destinations to give a fillip to the industries in these industrially poor states in 2002. Though there were not much takers for the scheme in the initial years, the migration to tax free zones picked up momentum when the central government introduced MRP-based excise in the country in 2005.