The ongoing case on the pharmaceutical pricing policy in the Supreme Court will come up for hearing only in January, possibly with a new bench, putting pressure on the petitioners to begin the process afresh.

Though the case entered an advanced stage of hearing, it has been listed for hearing after four weeks when it came last time on November 25 in the bench headed by Justice G S Singhvi. With the judge retiring very soon and court going for vacation before the new year, the case is all set to get prolonged further.

As requested by Siddharth Luthra, learned Additional Solicitor General, the apex court allowed the listing after four weeks, giving time to the parties to file fresh affidavits

The NGOs including All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN), LOCOST, Medico Friend Circle and Jan Swasthya Sahyog had filed the case, seeking to reverse the market based pricing formula under the new pharma policy to the old formula of cost based pricing. The Court, during the hearing, had said that it would 'test’ the new policy and the Drug Pricing Control Order.

AIDAN in its application had sought quashing of both the 2012 policy and DPCO 2013, which would reduce prices of 348 essential medicines, notified by the Department of Pharmaceuticals on December 7, last year and May 15 this year, respectively.

In the reply filed before the court recently, the Government stuck to the position of market based pricing and countered the arguments.  While claiming that the right way to compare impact of DPCO-2013 is by comparing with maximum prices than with the prices of the market leader, the government said if the span of control was expanded, the pharmaceutical industry would collapse.

Government has powers to prevent scarcity, migration to non-price control drugs, and will do so effectively when required and therefore the concerns raised by the petitioners are baseless.  The court’s  directive was to put essential drugs under price control, and the Government has done so. Any questioning of the same therefore is meaningless, the affidavits by the Ministry of Health and the Department of Pharmaceuticals said.

While reiterating the demand for repealing the DPCO and the policy, the petitioners also claimed that the  a Comprehensive Rational Pharmaceutical Policy beyond drug pricing per se is necessary. The last such comprehensive policy was in 1994 and has not been revised since, resulting in several public health concerns unaddressed. Such a comprehensive policy has to deal with ensuring production, procurement, distribution, prescription, consumption and use of medicines which are essential, rational, safe and affordable, the petitioners said.