National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has asked 19 drug companies to repay the amount overcharged on the price controlled formulations that contain at least one of the seven bulk drugs that were brought back under price control following a recent Supreme Court verdict. The NPPA served a total of 32 notices to these companies. The amount that would have to be paid by these companies would amount to about Rs 50 crore.

While the authority had already sent notices to recover the overcharged amount from all five-drug companies who were petitioners to the Supreme Court case, this is the first time, it decided to move against the non-petitioner companies. The authority is in the process of issuing notices to more companies in the coming weeks, it is learnt.

The non-petitioner companies who have been slapped with notices are Dr Reddy Labs Ltd, Nicholas Piramal (I) Ltd, FDC Ltd, Wockhardt Merind, Sun Pharma (I) Ltd, Deys Medical Stores Ltd, Kopran Ltd, Cadila Pharma Ltd, Sol Pharma Ltd, Lyka Labs Ltd, Torrent Pharma, Targof Pure Drugs Ltd, Bio-Chem Pharma Industries, Max Pharma, Centaur Labs (P) Ltd, Biological Evans Ltd, IPCA Lab (P) Ltd, Ind-Swift Ltd and Biddle Sawyer Ltd. The first nine companies who figure in the above list are the ones who have received more than one notice from NPPA.

The current notices are based on the calculation of the overcharged amounts up to June 2000 on formulations containing bulk drugs like Ciprofloxacin, Norfloxacin, Doxycycline, Salbutamol, Theophylline, Cloxacillin or Glipizide.

The companies who were party to the case and received notices at the first place are Cipla Ltd, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Okasa Pharma Ltd, Unichem Laboratories and USV Ltd. Among the five, Ranbaxy has paid up the overcharged amount as per the official notice.