The National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority (NPPA) has introduced voluntary online e-filing system for pharmaceutical companies to send their applications to NPPA for approval or revision of price of scheduled drug formulations and the price list under Form-III, Form-IV and Form-V of Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) 1995.

Implementation of the system is a step forward in various e-governance initiatives taken up by NPPA. The online e-filing would facilitate NPPA in compiling the applications at faster pace for efficient delivery of service, said a release from the price controlling body.

All applicant companies may note that the online e-filing system would be available in addition to the manual filing under DPCO'95, it said. It may be accessed over Internet using Internet Explorer version 4.0 or above from any windows based computer.

According to the instructions by the NPPA, no fields should be left blank while filing it. Form can be modified as many times until Final submission is done and when the filled in form is submitted for the first time, system provides a unique form number to the applicant for carrying out any modification and in taking print out of the information filled in.

"Applicants may take the printout as many times to ensure correctness of details. Modifications may be carried out using the Edit option. Once all modifications are done into the satisfaction, applicants may finalise the form by clicking on Final Submission. Please note that no correction could be done once the form is marked as final. Applicants are required to take the Final print, which will bear the Form number. This Number can be used for future correspondence with NPPA. This print out is required to be sent to NPPA by post along with the required supporting documents," the NPPA said.

Duly signed application should reach NPPA within one month of making final submission on e-filing. After one month, if the hard copy of the application bearing the unique form number does not reach NPPA, the e-filed data would be automatically deleted from the database. And fresh application needed to be filed again.