The Union chemicals ministry's Jan Aushadhi stores project, which is running well behind the schedule with just 14 fully operational stores against a target of 100 stores by November this year, will get the big boost in the coming months as the Union minister of state for chemicals Shrikant Jena has put an ambitious target of 250 stores by this time next year.

According to sources, the minister has asked the senior officials in the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) to accord top priority to the Jan Aushadhi project. The minister is believed to have told the officials to anyhow meet the target of opening a total of 250 Jan Aushadhi stores in different parts of the country, even at the cost of other projects and programmes of the department.

Sources also said that the minister is concerned about the slow progress of the project which is aimed to make quality generic medicines available at affordable prices to the poorer sections of society. Providing quality medicines at affordable prices to the poor people is one of the promises made by the Congress-led UPA government at the centre during the elections. The minister has also committed in Parliament during the just concluded session that the government will open at least 250 stores in one year.

Jan Aushadhi stores (generic drug stores) project is an ambitious project of former chemicals minister Ramvilas Paswan under which the government proposed to open one Jan Aushadhi store in each district of the country. By establishing the Jan Aushadhis in each district, preferably in the premises of the district hospitals, the government wanted to ensure quality medicines to the poor people at affordable prices. At a time when the prices of medicines are increasingly becoming out of the reach of poorer sections of the society, the Jan Aushadhi stores are expected to prove to be a boon to them. Once implemented according to the prices suggested by the government, the treatment cost is to come down drastically, as much as 93 per cent in some categories.

The government launched the project on November 25 last year when it opened a Jan Aushadhi store at Amritsar in Punjab. Though some more stores were opened in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, it did not pick up momentum after that. Though the Department of Pharmaceuticals maintains that 30 generic outlets are operational in different parts of the country, the minister stated in Parliament that only 14 have been opened so far.