The Kerala government has begun its investigation into the alleged corrupt practices of some of the office-bearers of the All Kerala Chemists and Druggists Association (AKCDA) who have allegedly amassed crore of rupees by arm-twisting the pharma companies that approach the AKCDA for permission for marketing their new products in the drug market.

The Kerala government had earlier constituted a 6-member subject committee, which included MLAs Sunil Kumar, Kutty Ahmed Kutty, Rajendran and Hamsa, to investigate the allegation made by a section of AKCDA members against some of the office-bearers including its president AN Mohan, secretary Ravindran and treasurer Sayed. The subject committee held its first meeting on November 21 in Thiruvananthapuram. The committee will present its findings to the government soon.

Resentment has been brewing in the AKCDA for some time against the alleged misdeeds of the office-bearers. A section of the members had formed a 'corrective force' inside the AKCDA in September this year and held its first state convention on October 4 in Thrissur which was inaugurated by state health minister Sreemati Teacher. The convention turned out to be a big show of strength by the corrective force as a large number of members turned up for the convention.

According to sources, the bane of all issues dogging the AKCDA is the product information certificate (PIC). The AKCDA has made it mandatory for all the pharma companies to get the PIC by paying Rs 2000 before introducing a new product in the market. No drug distributor in the state will accept the medicines from the drug companies without PIC.

Sources said that the AKCDA office-bearers use the PIC baton as an effective tool to arm-twist the pharma companies for favours both in cash and kind. The office-bearers browbeat the drug companies to give the distributorship to their favourites and if the companies do not heed to their demand, they will simply turn down the application for PIC. No drug company has the audacity to do that as hundreds of crore are at stake.

Meanwhile, the state government is seized of the issue and is preparing a law under which both giving and taking fees like PIC under any name will be made a punishable offence. The government's attention was drawn to the issue by Sunil Kumar MLA who raised the issue in the state Assembly in September this year.