The stalemate in the Indian Pharmaceutical Congress Association (IPCA) remain unresolved as the dissenting constituent organizations declined to accept the recommendations of the committee appointed by IPCA to look into the issues and to create a new organizational framework for the organization.

IPCA, the organizing body of the largest annual pharma event in the country -the Indian Pharmaceutical Congress (IPC)- for the last 56 years, is on the verge of a break up on a host of issues raised by four of its constituent members, The Indian Pharmacy Graduates Association (IPGA), The Indian Hospital Pharmacists Association (IHPA), Association of Pharmacy Teachers of India (APTI) and All India Drug Control Officers Confederation (AIDCOC), over the dominance of the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA). The four organizations had threatened to break away from IPCA over issues like dominance of IPA in IPCA, lack of proper representation and benefit sharing, as reported in Pharmabiz, earlier.

The IPCA meeting held in Chennai a few weeks ago failed to approve the recommendations of Gopalakrishna Moorthy of Hyderabad, a veteran industry professional, instrumental in the formation of rules and by-laws of IPCA, who was entrusted as a one man-committee by IPCA to suggest new by-laws and framework for the functioning of IPCA, with a view to pacify the rebelling organizations and solve the crisis.

According to informed sources, the four organizations have informed the IPCA secretariat of their unwillingness to approve the recommendations, and to discuss the issue at their own organizational levels to decide on future course of action. The IPCA top brass is likely to meet again to discuss the issue in Mumbai by the end of this month.

One among the recommendations of the committee was to allow representation in IPCA in accordance with the membership strength of the respective associations. The dissenting members were of the view that all the five member organizations should get equal representation, as all the five associations are equally responsible for the conduct of IPC. Now IPA dominates IPCA with 8 members, the representation for other associations is limited to only 2 members each. (Apart from this, 5 members from the Local Organizing Committee (LoC) of each year IPC venue also qualify as IPCA members).

Another recommendation, which came up for discussion and failed to entice consensus was to allow IPA to take the lead in conducting IPC on every alternate years, and each of the IPCA constituent associations could conduct the IPC on a rotation basis during their turn. In order to solve the issue of benefit sharing, the committee recommendation was to give 25 per cent of benefits to other organizations other than IPA, and this was also not acceptable to the rebelling organizations.

The present IPCA committee is located in Chennai and is responsible for conducting the IPCs at Chennai, Kolkotha and the 57th IPC at Hyderabad.