While Amar Singh-led Parliamentary Committee is undertaking a study visit to different states to ascertain the views of stake-holders on the Bill to create the Central Drug Authority of India (CDAI), some leading pharmaceutical experts have expressed apprehensions on the proposal, terming it as a 'bureaucratic authority' rather than a technical authority.

Dr B.D Miglani, pharmaceutical consultant and educationist, expressed his concern over the issue and said that Chapter IA of the proposed bill did not clarify on the actual number of the members to be appointed by the Central government for the CDAI. It was also not clear that how many people would come from the technical field and the other fields like public administration, finance and law, he noted.

"If the CDA is going to have three or five members in its committee, most of them must be chosen from technical field and only one member should be taken from the other field. Otherwise, it is not going to be a competent technical authority, but will end up as a bureaucratic one", said Dr Miglani.

According to him, the proposed bill did not clarify whether the chairperson of the authority would be a technical person or a non-technical one. "The chairperson and members of the CDA shall be appointed by the Central Government from amongst persons who have special knowledge of, and at the least fifteen years' professional experience in pharmaceutical industry, research or teaching, or public administration, finance or law", he quoted from the bill.

The experts, on the other hand, wanted that the chairperson, who should take the charge of the entire gamut of licensing and streamlining of the pharma sector, should be purely a technical person and only then the proposed CDA would get its original identity and attain the object for which it is being formed.

Dr S S Agrawal, Principal Delhi Institute of Pharmaceutical Science and Research (DIPSAR), while commenting over the issue, said that the term of office of chairperson and members was expected to be three years in the proposed bill. But it should be at least five years. "Since it is going to be a big department, the three-year term is very short and must be extended to at least for five years," added Prof. Agrawal.