The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has referred over 200 cases related to professional misconduct of pharmacists to the Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council (MSPC) for action. Officials maintain that there is a growing trend of absence of pharmacists due to renting out pharmacy certificates to the drug retail stores and doing employment elsewhere.  

As per official records, based on the referrals, MSPC has disposed of 122 such cases till date and is in the process of working on over 60 such cases referred by the FDA for action.   

MSPC is a quasi-judicial body which can act against the errant pharmacists by way of either issuing warning letters or cancelling their registrations. As a part of its exercise to curb the malpractices of pharmacists, MSPC has till date cancelled the registrations of 10 such pharmacists referred by FDA for professional misconduct from across the state. While cancellations done in five of these cases were related to misrepresentation of facts by the pharmacists, three related to dual registrations and one was related to a pharmacist who has shifted base overseas.

A senior FDA official pinpoints that most of the cases referred for MSPC action relate to the absence of pharmacists at the drug stores due to the unethical practice of doing dual employment.

Experts pinpoint that MSPC being a quasi-judicial body has the challenge of timely and judicious disposal of such cases notwithstanding the fact that such cases have a bearing on the patient safety and need to be severely dealt with.

Mere absence of a pharmacist during an FDA inspection does not amount to a professional misconduct. It has to be backed by circumstantial evidence which proves that the absence was due to a pharmacist doing dual employment, in an incident of he being found forging bills and in an event of prescription medicines or Schedule H drugs sold without a bill in his/her absence. Such kind of cases take almost a year to get resolved by the state council which calls the aggrieved party for hearing and written submission at the full council meeting held twice a year in February and September.

As per MSPC records, 81 cases were referred between 2005 and 2010 by the state FDA. Official records of period ranging from January 2013 to May 2014 revealed that the state FDA has also been stringent on its enforcement related to professional misconduct and has also filed FIRs on the same across the state.