The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended its assistant commissioner V A Jawdekar for neglecting his duty.

Recently, FDA commissioner Mahesh Zagde had visited a chemists and general stores near Babulnath area in Mumbai. He found that there was no pharmacist present at the shop but many blank bills were signed by him. Zagde informed, “When the shop owner admitted that the pharmacist only comes once in a week, I suspended the assistant commissioner in charge of the Babulnath area.”

Maharashtra FDA informed that the state has more than 1.5 lakh registered pharmacists in the state. Mahesh Zagde has sought information that all 60,000 medical stores across the state has full-time pharmacists to verify prescriptions and issue bills as per provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics (D&C) Act, 1940.

After investigation FDA has found that there were no pharmacists in 25,000 of the 60,000 shops in the state, and no action was taken against shop owners and FDA officials.

Many incidents of wrong medicines have come into notice wherein, FDA officials were instructed to check shops and ensure full-time presence of pharmacists. Zagde informed that if there is no improvement in the situation in a week's time, more suspensions are likely to happen.