Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA) has filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court last Thursday in support of the department of chemicals and petrochemicals’ contention that Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 is not against the public interest. OPPI, the other pharma industry body representing multinational drug companies also filed a SLP in support of the government a day later.

Both these petitions are expected to be admitted by the Supreme Court during this week and the matter is expected to be taken up for hearing in two weeks time.

The move by IDMA and OPPI to participate in the legal tussle, with the department, defending the Pharmaceutical Policy in the Apex Court is an expression of their discontentment against the continuing delay in implementing the Pharmaceutical Policy, announced with the intention of giving boost to the country’s pharmaceutical industry.

The progress of implementation of Policy was blocked when a public interest litigation stayed it in the Karnataka High Court last year. The petitioners challenged an expected Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), only an instrument of the Pharmaceutical Policy, without raising any objection to the policy statement.

IDMA is of the view that the petitioners argument in Karnataka HC that Pharmaceutical Policy and the expected DPCO are not in public interest, is baseless. The gradual reduction of price and licensing controls over the last 25 years and the resultant decline in drug prices in the country are indicative of the government’s concern for public interest in framing the policy.

Industry bodies are of the view that government’s concern for public interest is also evident from the fact that National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority not only controls the prices of a set of essential drugs but also monitors the price movements of decontrolled drug formulations.