The Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industries (CIPI), the apex organization for the state level associations of the small-scale pharmaceutical manufacturers, accused the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) for having influenced the government to implement the MRP based excise duty regime.

Talking to Pharmabiz, T S Jaishankar, chairman of CIPI alleged the general feeling among the CIPI members was that the move was part of concerted efforts of Indian multinationals and multinational drug companies to wipe out SSIs from the business map of the country.

"This did not happen overnight. There have been concerted efforts to kill our units for sometime. Most of them have huge spare capacities and they need not rely on contract manufacturing options. Once Paswan identified about 12 products on which they were reaping huge profits, and decided to put a cap on their margins, they immediately came forward to agree for reducing margins by 20 per cent. Then we were asked to reduce 25 per cent margins," he says.

"Then the move itself was dropped, and suddenly the MRP-based excise regime came into force. This is ambiguous and we suspect definitely the IPA would have pulled the strings to divert the attention from them and to bring in an MRP-based excise regime, which they would have brought to the notice of the central excise officials and ministry. They are the only beneficiary in this bargain, and we suspect their role in surfacing the MRP- based excise duty," alleged Jaishankar.